Lentil soup and upma: my comfort foods during wet weather

Rain rain rain. Nonstop.
All day, all week, unrelenting.
I want it to END. Now.

During the torrential rains, I saw an intriguing recipe for a tomato-based lentil soup in the NYT that I decided to try. Nothing lifts your spirits during cold, damp weather like a nice bowl of hearty soup. I followed the recipe as written, except that I realized that I didn't have cumin, lemon or tomato paste, so used another spice and used tomato sauce instead of tomato paste. (Note to self: if you're trying an unusual version of a recipe, make sure you have all of the ingredients before starting recipe, instead of assuming that you have everything, simply because "they're staples". Duh.)

I seem to be eternally recipe-adherence-challenged. However, unlike bread, soup is much more forgiving.

The result was quite satisfying. Some of the lentils dissolved, making the soup heartier and more robust.
I liked the outcome, though as you can see from this picture, the soup--the hue, the consistency--looks nothing like the picture in the NYT.

The other comfort food I made along with the soup was upma--a savory cream of wheat with onions and peas and seasoned with various spices. I got the recipe from Patita a while back, and it has since become a regular part of my repertoire. It is soooooooooooooo easy to make and is yummy. It also gives me a good dose of iron to boot, which is a big plus, since I don't eat meat (unless it's prosciutto). I usually make a batch of upma and then eat it over the course of a week. It is good either cold or hot, which makes it a very versatile portable food item. It is the yellow thing in a bowl pictured above. Here is a closer look at it:
The brown flecks are udid dal. The dark green things are curry leaves, which I only recently have discovered (thanks to Patitia), but they have quickly risen to the status of "indispensable herb"; I keep some stored in my freezer for "emergency" uses. In addition to being useful in things like this and other Indian curries, it adds a lovely smoky flavor to toasted cashews.

So now that I have enough food to feed 10, I say let the rains come.
I'm now armed and ready for thee.