Black Bean & Lentil Soup

It's been kind of chilly and wet around College Park lately, so I made soup.

Ingredients
1 large can GOYA black beans (note: these have lots of sodium. yuck... i'm buying reduced sodium next time, or biting the bullet and spending hours with dry black beans)
1 cup dry lentils
3 vegetable bouillon cubes
diced carrots to taste
one large onion (or two small ones?)
1 container (you know, the frozen bricks at the grocery store) of frozen spinach
pepper
garlic powder (I know, sacrilege) 
lots of water
rice?


Instructions
Dice onions & carrots and sautée in bottom of very very big pot (4 quart???) with olive oil. While sautéeing, rinse lentils (there's dirt in there sometimes) and strain. Put in block of spinach. When onions & carrots are sautéed enough, put in a lot of water and bouillion cubes. Bring to a boil. A good way to know how much water is to use enough water to cook the lentils, plus a little more to make it soup. You can Google this. That's what I did. After the water boils add the lentils, and then add your large can of black beans. Keep heat on high. Try to break up your spinach brick. When it boils, bring down to a simmer and cook until the lentils are soft. Lentils become soft enough to eat rather quickly, but you have to cook them for a while for them to be how they should. Taste until you like it. Add pepper/garlic power/<insert>your favorite spice</insert> to your likeing. If you're using GOYA black beans, DO NOT ADD SALT. I didn't realize it had salt already in it, and the soup was too salty for my liking. I made the soup last night, and tonight I made Uncle Ben's rice and added that to it. Much better. Much less like nasty salty canned soup. 


I think lots of other things would taste good in the soup. Leeks... celery... green onions... I might try all of those. But next time, I'm definitely buying reduced sodium or dry black beans, because although this soup tastes wonderful, it gives you that wonderful bloaty feeling from too much salt afterwards.


But, by all means, do make it. It's delicious, and you can make healthy improvements such as:
- using less boullion
- using reduced sodium or dry black beans
- using fresh spinach (which avoids the block of spinach)
- using non-instant brown rice instead of Uncle Ben's


Yum. I love my legumes.