Spiced Lentils

As I am starting to go through my kitchen cabinets, cleaning them out in anticipation of our move in three weeks, I am finding that I have a lot of food items I have forgotten about, tucked away behind other things.  The other day I found about 1 cup of red lentils leftover from a curried soup recipe I had made earlier in the year.  I wanted to use them up but didn't have all the ingredients on hand to make the soup, but I did find this recipe on foodnetwork.com that I decided to try, and I am happy I did!

Spiced Lentils (from Foodnetwork.com, with a couple of tweaks by me!)

1 cup red or yellow lentils 4 cups water
pinch of turmeric
1 tablespoon chopped ginger
salt
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 teaspoon cumin
2 sliced garlic cloves
2 to 3 dried chipotle chiles (the original recipe uses red chiles, but I had these on hand)
1 15 oz. can diced fire roasted tomatoes (I used Muir Glen)

Bring lentils, water, turmeric and ginger to a boil; simmer 15 to 20 minutes. Whisk vigorously; season with salt to taste. Cook cumin seeds, garlic cloves dried chiles in a skillet with olive oil over medium-high heat, 2 minutes. Add tomatoes; cook 1 minute. Stir into the lentils.