Split Pea Success!

This is a bit of an experiment today as I am attempting to write using our iPad, rather than our home computer, which has gotten to be a chore to even boot up.  So far, I am a little frustrated as I can't seem to be able to type directly on my publishing tool and have had to resort to composing in my email.  Blerg.  Technology, advancements, blah, blah, blah, right?

Anyway, I had a culinary breakthrough last night and I thought I would share.  Let me first say that, in my cooking, there are hallowed recipes, prepared by my mother all throughout my life, that I dare not attempt to make for my family.  My very favorite thing to eat in the world is my mother's chicken spaghetti, which, from an ingredient standpoint, is not a particularly complicated thing to make.  When I moved out of the house, she even wrote her recipe down for me and I have tried many, maaaannny times over the years to recreate it faithfully, only to have made an edible but decidedly disappointing bowl of pasta.  There are others: fried chicken, peppersteak, chocolate chip cookies and.....split pea soup.  

Almost every winter, for as long as I can remember, my mother has made a huge batch of split pea soup in her crockpot.  My sister and I (not my brother, oddly) lived for split pea soup days, especially since they came around so infrequently.  There was something about the creamy, salty soup that tasted so comforting, even in spite of its rather nasty olive green color and the way the smell would permeate the house for days afterward.  Even when we grew up and moved out of her house, my mother would cook the split pea soup and my sister and I would tote home little containers of mushy green love.  Despite how much I love my mom's split soup, I have only once tried to make it myself, using a crockpot recipe (not hers, I might add) that yielded an undercooked and vastly under-flavored "soup".  So, based on that experience and my chicken spaghetti disasters, I abandoned the effort.....until last night.

I don't know why I suddenly decided that it would be a good idea to make split pea soup, but, as I was writing a grocery list late last week, I wrote it down, thinking that, surely I could make a better go of it this time.  I had a bunch of leftover ham in my freezer (again, thank you, Mom) and a few carrots in the fridge that were begging to be used in a soup of some kind.  The weather had finally cooled off (which means that it is a chilly 68 degrees in Texas right now....brrrr!), so soup sounded pretty freaking awesome.  I happened to be discussing menu ideas with a friend one afternoon, as we walked the kids home from school, she mentioning that her kids detested lentil soup, which my kids love.  I said as much, adding that my plan was to make split pea soup this week and I was not sure how it would go over.  She said something to the effect that they were pretty much the same thing.  Lentil soup and split pea soup are pretty much the same thing!  This was a total revelation to me!  They are, really - slightly different ingredients, but the preparation is about the same: so, I made my split pea soup last night almost exactly as I would have made my lentil soup.  I sautéed some onions and carrots in rendered bacon fat, added the split peas, chicken stock and a little bit of water, seasoned with salt, pepper, thyme and bay leaves and simmered with copious amounts of diced, leftover ham until the peas had disintegrated.  When I was ready to serve, I added just a couple of tablespoons of red wine vinegar to brighten it up, et viola!  An amazingly delicious and richly flavored split pea and ham soup that everyone in my family LOVED!  It was so wonderful that my oldest took it for her lunch today!  Miracle of miracles!  Split pea success!