Other-worldly lentil soup

Sunday here was cool and cloudy. I looked around at the veggies in the house and realized I had all the ingredients for lentil soup. Normally I wouldn’t think about making lentil soup in mid July, but since our summer weather has been swinging through extremes, soup was actually just right for that day. And the next day. And the next. It was so good that even my husband, who never eats leftovers, ate it for days, and talked about it when he wasn’t eating it! It was so good that I found myself thinking about it with a happy heart after making it, and even though I had to bribe and threaten my sons into trying it, one admitted it was good, and the other one wanted me to add soup to his broccoli after it was (tragically) all gone. So, what made it so delicious? I think it had a lot to do with the weather~ something about cooler weather in the late summer has such a wistful, fallish feeling. It is a love letter from Autumn that is still far enough away to remember only the sweetness of it, and not the rainy winter that inevitably follows. Plus all the veggies were in peak summer condition, so plump and ripe. In fact I’ve never actually seen a leek as large as the one I used, but I heard something about the leeks being exceptionally big this year. Indeed! So, what follows is basically what I did for the soup, but since I just kind of winged it with what I had in stock, there measurements are not exact.
First I put some olive oil in large soup pot and warmed it over med-high.
Then I added about 3/4 of a large white onion and stirred for about 3 minutes.
Next I added about 3 cloves of garlic and the chopped squares of 2 (peeled) potatoes.
A cup or so of broccoli and the chopped semicircles of 3 (peeled) carrots went in next, then the chopped up leek.
I stirred those a couple of minutes while adding about a Tablespoon of balsamic vinegar and a Tablespoon or so of wheat free soy sauce. Next I added 4 cups of veggie and herb stock plus the lentils I had been soaking in water. Once the lentils were completely soft in the soup I added sea salt mixed with herbs, herb d’Provence, thyme, basil and black pepper. That is about it! It was excellent that first day, but definitely better the next. Anyway, time to enjoy a bit more of summer before Fall is here for real. Off to swim lessons!