Recipes from Helle

Okay so I love me some good old fashioned split pea soup, but most days, all I have on hand are the peas and some potatoes. Those of you who read this would probably be shocked to know that I rarely ever have fresh veggies in the fridge due to the lack of demand for them in this particular household. I.e. I buy them, use what I need for whatever two or three recipes I needed them for, and then they languish away in the drawer until they either get too brown and mushy to use or get lucky and get tossed in some pot of soup. Since we don’t eat much soup in the summer, this is an especially bad time for veggies to be hangin around if you know what I mean. Plus my husband doesn’t like vegetables particularly- he prefers to get his nutrients from a multivitamin so theres no convincing him there. But I digress… a lot.

We’ve established that veggies in fresh form are not prolific in this house aside from the ones currently growing in my garden so when I went to the cupboard yesterday and the cupboard and fridge were pretty much bare I was stumped as to what to make for dinner. Then I saw those two bags of split peas sitting there. So smug and yet so innocent. “She can’t use us,” they said, “She doesn’t have all the ingredients!” Well let me tell you I showed them! And now I’ll show you what I did with them.

• 2 lbs split peas
• 1/2 lb bacon cooked
• 8 small potatoes diced
• 1 med zucchini diced
• 3 bay leaves
• 1 tbsp curry powder
• 1/2 cup sour cream or french onion dip or combination of the two (this is a cleaning out the fridge recipe)
• 1 cup milk give or take
• 10 bullion cubes
• 2 tsp salt
• pepper to taste
• 2 tbsps minced garlic
• 3 tbsps dried onion flakes (my mind drew a blank on the name of those)

Okay so here goes. If you have carrots and celery and real onions please feel free to add those, but I didn’t and I wanted a recipe out there on the web for those people like me who really need to grocery shopping but can’t until payday cuz thats how it goes some weeks.

Right. Rinse the peas because as they say on the bag- they’re a natural agricultural product and despite modern machinery may still have a rock in them that would not feel good if you bit down on it. I used 15 cups of water when I made mine, but you can use less for a thicker soup- I wish I had. If you use less, cut down on the bullion accordingly but not too much- peas soak up a lot of flavor and you want this soup to have a good taste to it so that picky people will eat it too. Put the peas, water and really everything else except the bacon on to boil for a while. I cut up all the bacon except about 5 pieces and set it aside. I threw those 5 pieces in with everything else to give it a meatier flavor. It will take about 45 minutes with things at a medium boil for things to get mushy enough for this soup to be considered done. If I have the time I let it cook itself into a mush, but last night when I made it I was short on time because our water had been off half the day so I started ladling this into the blender and pureeing it for about 5 seconds for each batch. If you’re lucky enough to have one of those hand blenders that would be better. Just be careful either way because duh soup is HOT. Once you have everything blended or cooked to the consistency you like, top it off with the reserved bacon that is nice and crispy and serve hot. Yummy!

So there you have a bare cupboard split pea recipe.