Recipe for Dirtying Every Pot aka Milos's Lentil Soup

I got this recipe for lentil soup from one of my graduate-school colleagues many years ago. Milos was from Eastern Europe and studied urban history; we've unfortunately lost touch after he left Facebook. The recipe has been sitting in my hand-copied cookbook just waiting for me to remember how much I like the idea of lentil soup. One of my New Year's Resolutions the last two years has been to cook more from my recipe collection than from the internet, so I decided to seize the opportunity to make a delicious cold-weather dish that was can eat from for the next week. According to Milos, you can make this with browned beef, but I decided to go vegetarian and leave that out. It's really creamy and delicious! The process left something to be desired, however...

1. Figure out how to buy 1.5-2 cups of split yellow lentils (labeled mung dal at the co-op). Also pick up 0.5 pounds fresh green beans, a couple of plum tomatoes, 3 large carrots, and a medium white onion. Assume you have tomato sauce at home.

2. Listen to the radio while chopping the carrots into thick rounds, the onion into little dices, and the green beans into ~1-inch sections. Soak the lentils in a pan, then drain. Put it all in the fridge for later. Discover the tomato sauce has become a fungus farm.

3. Two hours before dinner, turn on the radio again. Decide 8 cups of water aren't going to fit; transfer lentils to large pot. Add 3 bay leaves, the rest of a jar of sweet paprika (just over 1 tsp), a little black pepper, and some salt.

4. Realize you need to saute the veggies before combining with the lentils. Start heating olive oil and garlic in a small pan. Change to large saute pan. Cover veggies and some salt with a lid until onion is translucent, then add to lentils.

5. Improvise 0.5 cups tomato sauce with last week's cherry tomatoes, the dregs of a watery jar of salsa, some olive oil, a pinch of sugar, and a little water. Add to lentils once cooked down.

6. After an hour, turn the heat on the lentils way down. Ask Dear Husband to put the green beans in and stir. He will do this with a clean spoon instead of the ladle on the stove. Cook another 40-60 minutes. Add a bunch of basil shortly before serving.

7. Burn some bread in the broiler.

8. Spoon soup into bowls, add a spoonful of yogurt, sprinkle with parsley, and serve with a nice Greek salad.