Lots of people start the new year with a resolution for weight loss or healthier eating, and for most of us, that means more home-cooked meals. Cooking your own food is the best way to control what you're eating, and cooking at home is nearly always less expensive than eating out. If your list of resolutions for 2009 includes a desire to save money on healthier meals cooked at home, I'm here to tell you how BlogHer can help, with a new Thursday night feature we're calling Weekend Menu Planning.

Weekend Menu Planning will suggest healthful and thrifty recipes for you to add to your cooking rotation. Doing some planning on the weekend about what you'll cook for the next week is a good way to insure you really will cook, instead of hitting the drive-through window! Since most people have more time to shop for food and cook on the weekend than during the week, Weekend Menu Planning posts will come on Thursday night, giving you a heads-up that the weekend is coming and it's time to think about what you might want to cook for the coming week.

Each week the Weekend Menu Planning post will feature five variations of a certain dish or type of recipe, spotlighting the fabulous food blogs in the BlogHerAds network. We're kicking it off this week with lentil soup, an inexpensive dish that's delicious and healthful. Pick the version that appeals to you the most, then add it to your menu for next week.

Half Baked has a classic Lentil Soup with a bit of bacon and red wine vinegar for a little extra kick, and she says her carnivorous husband found it very filling. There are also instructions about how to make this soup vegetarian, if you prefer. (Lentil soup from Half Baked is pictured above.)

Lentils come in many colors, and the Spicy Red Lentil Soup from Nami Nami is a beautiful shade of red. This soup has chicken stock, but could easily be vegan if you used vegetable stock instead. (Spicy Red Lentil Soup from Nami Nami is pictured above.)

Lindsay from Cafe Johnsonia calls her version The Best Lentil Soup, and this recipe adapted from The Joy of Cooking gives an option for water, chicken stock, or vegetable stock as the base of the soup. (The Best Lentil Soup from Cafe Johnsonia is pictured above.)

Lentils are eaten around the world, and Ya Salam Cooking features Kuwaiti Lentil Soup. This recipe uses a type of clarified butter called ghee, but the comments clarify that regular butter can be used. (Kuwaiti Lentil Soup from Ya Salam Cooking is pictured above.)

Finally, Happy Herbivore has a delicious-sounding vegan Red Lentil Curry Soup. This recipe has a few more ingredients than some of the others, but it's very quick and easy to make. (Red Lentil Curry Soup from Happy Herbivore is pictured above.)

Are you a fan of lentil soup? If you have a good lentil soup recipe, please share the link or your recipe in the comments.

Kalyn Denny writes about food and at BlogHer.com and shares her passion for low-glycemic cooking at Kalyn's Kitchen. Kalyn loves lentil soup, and one of her favorites is Vegetarian Lentil Soup with Spinach, Tomatoes, and Cumin.