Split Pea Soup

Stuck home today with the little guy- he's got a cold so we're trying to stay inside and warm these next couple days while I'm off work. Hoping he will be easily entertained today as my go-to distraction for cranky child is often a change of scenery but the single digit temps around here are not what he needs to go out in so home it is. Lately he's been into jigsaw puzzles so I think I'll see if I can find one he hasn't seen in awhile. He's funny, I've never seen a 4 year old so dedicated to puzzle-making once he gets going. He will sit and do a 100 piece puzzle with minimal help (none if he's seen it a few times, help with the frame if new). I guess it shouldn't surprise me since he's always been interested in how things go together and work. Future Purdue engineering student? Hmmm...

As promised I did get that recipe typed up. It's a combination of several recipes I've tried and is super easy.

Split Pea Soup

1 pound dry split peas
1-2 cups diced ham
4 cups water
4 cups chicken broth
1 cup chopped each- carrot, onion, celery, potato
2 cloves minced garlic
1 teaspoon salt (more or less to your taste- depends on how salty your ham and broth are already too)
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
1 tablespoon minced fresh parsley
2 bay leaves

Rinse and sort peas, removing any bad ones. Everything goes in your favorite soup kettle/pot, bring to a boil and then cover and lower heat to simmer for 1 to 1 1/2 hours (stirring occasionally) or until peas are tender. Fish out the bay leaves and enjoy.

For the visual...







That's about it for now. Thanks again and welcome to anyone just finding me from IHSW and the Grow Your Blog party. Don't forget there's still a mystery giveaway open until Feb. 1 and that's not just for new visitors, anyone wanting to enter may do so by commenting on this post from a few days ago.

Oh, and one more thing- sorry for any missing pics you may encounter if you should decide to go through old posts. My project for the year is to actually label all my posts and fix all the old Webshots images that are no longer there and I'm nowhere near done. Almost all the images are over in Photobucket now if you're really desperate to see something, just need to fix the links.