It begins.... with pea soup on a snowy evening

Ok, so after months of talking about it, I've decided to join the world of bloggers. I'm thinking this will be mostly about cooking and recipes, though I'm sure unrelated rants and observations will also find a home here. I may also end up posting things about knitting, as I seem to be doing a lot of that these days too.

If you are reading this, you probably know me... but I'm going to introduce myself anyway. I am Canadian, currently living in New Jersey because of my husbands work. I'm not able to work here, so I spend my time volunteering at a local health food store, cooking, reading, knitting, learning yoga, and trying to do all the other things I never had time for when I was working full-time. I've been a pescatarian (sometime fish and seafood-eating vegetarian) for 19 years and have always loved cooking and experimenting in the kitchen.

It's snowing here today. The nice fluffy kind that makes the trees look like a postcard. Yoga and choir are cancelled tonight because they can't handle snow down here. So I found myself with a free afternoon and evening. I decided that such weather deserves comfort food and these days comfort food seems to take the form of either a soup, a stew or a casserole. I opened the pantry and the first thing that caught my eye was a jar of mixed green and yellow split peas. Pea soup, I thought, mmmmm. After flipping through a few cookbooks and reading a few recipes online I came up with a general idea for my soup (I rarely stick to just one recipe). The soup was a hit - Scott claims it is the best pea soup he's ever tasted. Here is what I came up with:

Pea Soup
1 cup dried mixed yellow and green split peas
1 yellow onion
1 large carrot
2 stalks celery
1 med-large potato, cut into small cubes
1 Tbs olive oil
5 cups water
1 no-salt vegetarian bouillon cube
2 bay leaves
salt and pepper

Rinse the peas with cold water and set aside. Chop up the onions, carrots and celery and saute in oil with a little salt and pepper until the onions are soft (3-5 min or so). Add the water, bouillon cube, peas and bay leaves and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer for 15 minutes. Add the potato and cover. Allow to cook, stirring frequently (so that the soup doesn't burn to the bottom of the pot) for another 35-40 minutes. When it is ready the peas should be soft and the potatoes mostly dissolved. Remove the bay leaves, season with salt and pepper and enjoy!