Foolproof Lentil Barley Soup

I'm almost embarrassed to post this, because it is so extremely easy. But our friends who were here to eat it with us asked for the recipe, because they liked it so much. Alas, I can't remember where I found it, so I can't give credit where credit is due, but it is a wonderful soup. I made it twice last week, and would have made it again if I hadn't run out of lentils and barley. So it also helped in the pre-Pesach pantry purge.

The actual recipe went like this:
1 cup lentils, rinsed and picked over
1/2 cup barley
1 onion, diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 stalks of celery, sliced
2 carrots, thinly sliced
6 cups vegetable broth (I ended up using much more)
1/2 tsp oregano
1/2 tsp cumin
salt and pepper to taste

Put all ingredients in large pot. Bring to a boil. Reduce to simmer. Simmer one hour, stirring occasionally. Eat.

This soup is very forgiving. It was incredibly thick -- I ended up pouring in several additional cups of broth, and water when I ran out of broth. The second time I made it, I threw in an entire bag (about 1 lb?) of "frozen vegetables for soup" that included potatoes, lima beans, okra (I guess I know I live in the South now because the soup vegetables include okra?), corn, and some other stuff -- it was still great. I'm also pretty sure that the second time I made it I forgot the cumin and added basil -- that worked, too. Enjoy it, now and next winter.

Food photography is harder than it looks

What better inaugural post for my blog than the completion of my cake decorating class, culminating in these cakes for Adam's birthday?
The cake recipe is from the back of the Hershey's cocoa box, so I won't bother to post it here, but I will credit my friend Rachel with introducing me to the recipe. Wonderful, chocolatey, easy to make pareve (just use soy milk), and equally happy in pans of different shapes and sizes, as you can see by the mini cake (top, Hebrew) and regular-size cake (middle).
I like to fill the cake with a generous helping of raspberry jam between the layers. The frosting is a chocolate ganache. The question is, of course, was the improvement in my cake-decorating skills worth spending four Wednesday nights spent in a middle-school classroom in cake decorating class. To answer that question, check out last year's cake, bottom. (If anyone knows how to make blogger post the images right-side up and in the text, let me know!)
Some differences you can't see: this year, the decorating frosting is homemade raspberry buttercream, a big taste improvement over last year's purchased tubes. Other innovations, since my photography is dreadful, include whipping the ganache into frosting and using it to frost the sides of the cake, resulting in a smoother finish. I do think that the writing is better -- real buttercream is much easier to work with than the tubes -- and obviously, I didn't know how to make a puppy out of frosting until I took this class. But mostly I think that the class's value was not in the techniques learned but in the fact that it pushed me to go out and buy proper decorating equipment, and practice with the pastry bag until I reached a minimal level of comfort with it. I'm sure my next cake will be more polished, but I'm pretty pleased with these. Especially served at the end of a meal that included Arugala and Nectarine Salad, Lentil-Barley Soup, Polenta with Kale-Tomato Sauce and Cheese, of my own creation, and roasted acorn squash. I only wish it hadn't been Shabbat so I could've taken a picture of the plate. And most important of all, the birthday boy liked it, too.

PS My apologies for the messed up photos. If anyone knows how to place images throughout the post and prevent them from rotating themselves in strange ways, please let me know!