Sorting it out for 2012

Hi gang! I took some time off over the winter break and decided to put this lovely project on hold for the first part of 2012. I have a lot of "real" projects around the homefront to tend to (namely, my three gorgeous, active baby birds) and will be back in the spring with energy and focus.

Happy eating!!

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Thursdays with Kermit: Curried Butternut Squash Soup

I know, right?

It started when Full Circle Farm sent me kale a couple weeks ago and dared me to try it. And it was delicious.

So last week, when a large, unassuming butternut squash showed up in my Wednesday pick up, well, I figured Full Circle had issued the challenge. Thrown down the gauntlet, if you will.

"Try this," the farmers seemed to be saying, despite knowing full well that I just don't do squash.

A few minutes on the ol' Internets netted me a couple recipes I was interested in--namely some squash latkes via Hungry Girl. (I still plan to try those--they looked awesome!)

 But my dad had suggested trying squash soup recently and since every time I say I hate something without trying it, I end up loving it...I thought I had very little to lose.

Add to that, the fact that by the time I got around to making this, my squash was starting to look like it was going to give up its fight for life. And I can't have my produce going bad, you see. That would just be a shame.

I've never had Butternut Squash Soup, let alone the curried version, so I had very little to base my experience on. For all I knew, I did everything wrong and this is decidedly NOT an authentic version.

But pay no mind to my worries because, friends, this was delicious. The original version calls for a scant one teaspoon of curry powder which I thought was a little on the small side. I doubled that, and for the second teaspoon, I used Summit Spice and Tea's hotter, earthier Madras curry powder. It's fantastic stuff.

On to the soup, shall we?

Curried Butternut Squash Soup

Butternut Squash, roasted and chopped
2 cups chicken stock
1 teaspoon curry powder
1 teaspoon Madras curry powder
1 teaspoon onion powder
1 teaspoon garlic powder
Salt and pepper to taste

Optional:
Sour cream mixed with 1 teaspoon lime juice, as garnish

Directions:
Simple enough. I don't have an immersion blender (hint to my lovely husband hoping to find me an inexpensive Christmas present? Ha!), so I piled the roasted squash and chicken stock into my normal blender and let it work its magic until it was a smooth, creamy consistency.

To ol' Kermit the Pot the soup went, where I added the seasonings and the salt and pepper. Be sure to taste your soup as you season. I happen to love a lot of garlic flavoring--you may prefer more curry. It's all pretty subjective and all about personal taste. Make the soup your own!

Can it get much simpler? When it's warm enough to eat, it's ready! As a bonus, I mixed a scant teaspoon of lime juice with some sour cream I had left over from enchilada night and garnished the soup with a few delicious dollops. Magic!


Happy eating, and many thanks to my friends at Full Circle Farm for another great week of produce!

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A Mill and a Dream: The Alaska Flour Company

"Cultivators of the earth are the most valuable citizens. They are the most vigorous, the most independent, the most virtuous and they are tied to their country and wedded to its liberty and interests by the most lasting bands."

–Thomas Jefferson, 1785

It's not by accident that I'm publishing this piece on Thanksgiving Day. 

I actually had the pleasure of interviewing Delta Junction farmer Bryce Wrigley last week and have been thinking about the adventure he and his family are undertaking next month quite a bit. Every time I glance at my flour canister, each time the local grocery is out of milk, whenever it snows extra hard and I remember the things we talked about.

Alaska Flour Company rolls out on the first of December. It's the first milling operation, to the best of my knowledge, in Alaska. This is a big deal, and the more I recount what we talked about, the more folks may be apt to agree with me.

The Wrigleys came to Alaska more than 30 years ago.

"We're from Idaho," Bryce said. "And we came up here to try our hand at farming."

Over the years. the crops have changed, but the Wrigleys stayed, raising a family up along with the produce, grains, and animals that crossed their soil.

But flour? Where on earth did the family get that idea?

"We've talked about it for years, but this June we were visiting Idaho and had the opportunity to tour two large-scale flour mills."

While the scope of the Alaska Flour Company is smaller and more artisan in nature, encouragement from people in the business helped the Wrigley make the decision to begin the process. The last pieces of equipment arrived just a few weeks ago and the packaging material hit Alaska last week.

"We're on schedule," Bryce said. And the response so far?

"It's been instant. I put together a Facebook page and we were getting hits before I'd even finished. People are so excited to be a part of this. It's encouraging."

From here our discussion veered toward talk about food supply. I'm new to the local food movement, but when the Alaska Flour Company mission includes doing a part to help Alaska be more food secure, I was interested.

"Right now, Alaska has no emergency warehouse or stores of food if something were to happen," he said.  "We've got what's on our store shelves and what's in our own pantries. If something prevented that weekly barge from arriving in Anchorage's port, the effects would be felt pretty quickly."

A local flour company is a step in the right direction. They'll mill Sunshine barley and wheat they grow themselves in Delta Junction. As the enterprise grows, it's their hope to purchase grains from other farmers to keep our country's roots in agriculture strong. The more people who know the earth, who know how to grow the food we depend on, the better. And cities full of anxious consumers ready to support them? Even better.

"We're starting small, but our aim is to grow bigger and bigger. The less we have to depend on the Outside for our food, and at the moment, we ship in 95 percent of our food, the better off we'll be."

The family hopes Alaskans will embrace the mill as their own.

"We could have named it Wrigley Flour Company, but I wanted Alaskans to know this was for them--for all of us." 

Bags will hit shelves in early December and will be available in various sizes, including 5 and 10 pound resealable bags from home use. The company is compiling a list of retailers who will carry their flour on their shelves, and the company web site will keep an updated list as it becomes available. The site will also feature an online store for folks not able to track down the flour in their towns.

My son and I have been baking a lot this season. Cupcakes, spice cookies, and breads. And each time I spin the lid off my flour canister, I think about the Wrigley family and their hard work. And I can't wait for their product to make it to market so I can be a part of it, too.

Happy eating!

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Slow Food on a Sunday: Roasted Chicken with Pan Gravy

My mom has all manner of baked goods that I claim as hers. Whoopie pies, gingerbread cookies, and those apple free-form tarts she can whip up with her eyes closed. My dad? Well, the man can make a spaghetti and meatballs that rivals even the snootiest Italian joint. He also has those cube steaks with smoky green chiles and smooth melted cheese.

I associate those meals and foods with my parents. I make them these days as a way to connect and sort of  "live in" a memory. But the great thing about growing up is that you get to start claiming your own meals. It's not that I never ate roasted chicken growing up, it's just that I don't remember them. It wasn't their "signature" that I now associate them with. I know my mom now makes a roasted chicken for my grandparents when she's in Vermont visiting, but it's not one of the dishes I grew up with.

So a couple months back, I decided to make the roast chicken dinner mine. And I had no idea how to cook a damn chicken, but I stubbornly maintained my position and went through three rounds of various levels of "suck" before arriving at my method.

Rotisserie chickens run about $9 these days in the great AK. Isn't that ridiculous? Let alone the fact that they were probably pulled from the roaster at 11 a.m. and I don't swing by the incubator to pick one up until 5:30 p.m. That's just sort of gross, isn't it?

When you head back to the meat department of your average grocery store in Alaska, you can find a decent sized roaster chicken for under $5. No, seriously. Half the price of that chicken jerky monstrosity they sell next to the 18-hour old potato salad.

What a pretty, pretty bird!

I'll be honest, in an effort to create my own roast chicken method (because it's not really about measurements, it's more about just doing) I scoured the internet. I made friends with all manner of Food Network You Tube channels. I argued with Ina Garten and must have called Tyler Florence all manner of names when he put bacon in the equation.

My first chicken was cooked through, but had pale, anemic skin that fell off anyway because I cut into the bird two and a half seconds after I took it out of the oven. (Big no-no.)

On my second attempt, I paid close attention to the skin and tried to get that amazing buttery brown crispy awesomeness all at the expense of making sure the meat was cooked thoroughly. (Gross. Just gross.) I let the early browning of the skin make me jumpy and when the skin started to burn just a bit, I panicked and pulled the whole bird out. Way. Too. Early. Nothing kills your beautiful chicken skin like two minutes in the microwave to un-pink the breast meat. But, nothing kills your family's enthusiasm to come to the dinner table like a bout of bacterial stomach trauma. Choices....choices.

I borrowed a few "turkey" techniques I picked up a couple weeks ago when we hosted the Gracie Barra MMA Team for an early team Thanksgiving...namely the butter/herb/skin combo and the art of the tin foil tent.

On to the chicken...

Sunday Roast Chicken

Ingredients:
Roaster chicken (all manner of neck, gizzards and other such freaky stuff removed...a great job for your squeamish 7 year old if you're feeling prankster-ish)
1 stick of butter, softened
Greek seasoning (I get mine from Summit Spice and Tea, but you can jam together your own combo of parsley, marjoram, Greek oregano, and rosemary based on what you have on hand)
Salt
Pepper
1/2 of a medium onion, rough chopped
6 cloves of garlic, rough chopped
Lemon, halved and sliced into chunks (peel on, though I lost about a quarter of my lemon to said 7-year old as a reparation fee for making him grab the chicken neck thingy. I'm not really sure he'll ever get over that experience.)
White wine or water
2 cups of chicken stock

Directions:

Heat your oven to 425 degrees while you wrestle with your chicken. (Careful, they're ruthless about slipping out of your hands toward the garbage disposal.)

There's no such thing as too much butter...

Make yourself an herb butter by combining your softened butter, about 3 or 4 teaspoons of your seasoning, some salt and pepper. Additionally, make a small dish of salt and pepper and a little more of your seasoning and set aside.

Sprinkle some of that salt/pepper/seasoning combo inside the cavity of your washed and thoroughly dried bird and then stuff it full of the lemons and onions and garlic.

Take your chicken camping!

At this point,  I use my hand to separate the skin from the breast meat and make room for a butter rub down. It's kind of awkward at first and I feel like I'm violating this dead animal somehow, but it really makes a difference when you try to push your butter mixture beneath the skin and smooth down. So go ahead and push that herb butter beneath the skin and spread it as far down along the breast meat as you can. Get good and messy and quit being so girly about your dirty hands underneath some chicken skin. Next, smooth the butter all over the chicken. Yes, a big buttery rub down for the little guy before he goes into the oven. He'll thank you for it.

If you don't know how to truss your chicken, it's basically applying an Americana (yes, shameless jiu jitsu plug here) to the little wings and bending them back onto the bird. From there, tie the drumsticks together with kitchen twine or even some natural looking yarn you might have on hand. (Hey, at least it was white yarn and not lavender. Judge me not, dear reader!) Sprinkle salt and pepper all over the outer skin one last time and wish him well. He's got a long road ahead of him.

Get your roasting pan ready and add wine or water to the bottom of it to help the drippings from burning. (This is pretty important and I'll tell you why a little later.)

Birdie goes on to the roasting pan breast side down for 15 minutes in a 425 degree oven. At the 15 minute mark, pull your bird out, lower the oven to 325, and flip the bird using tongs or kitchen towels or an uncoordinated combination of both. (Guilty.)

Pitch a tent. (Or a fit if you choose to ignore me.)

This is the point in the process where we learn from my mistakes! Make a cute little tent (a folded piece of aluminum foil) for your chicken. No, seriously. It slows the breast meat from cooking/browning too quickly and thus forcing your hand with either burned skin or microwaved chicken. Trust me. Tent the little bugger.

Back into the hot he goes with his cute little tin foil hat for at least an hour. My bird took about 1 hour and 15 minutes. The thermometer in the breast should read 160 when you pull it out.

"It had to be roux..."

Learn from yet another of my mistakes, friends, and don't hack into your chicken right away. You know what happens if you do? You unleash hell in the form of chicken juices everywhere on your counter and floor. Like a veritable chicken dam bursts and sends all the moisture that's supposed to get reabsorbed into the meat all over the place. It's not pretty. Don't rush the resting time.

All aboard the gravy train!

While the chicken rests, grab about a half cup of the chicken fat from the drippings and throw it in a sauce pan. Toss in about four tablespoons of flour and heat over medium flame. Don't rush this part. Please, please, please don't rush this part or you make the mistake I did last night and you end up with beautiful gravy that has the slightest hint of smoky flour. (Sigh.)

I warned you earlier about some white wine or at least a little water  in your roasting pan and burned drippings is what you're trying to avoid. Burned drippings + too high heat while making the roux = smoke flavor city and not in the good "mesquite barbecue" sort of way. And trust me...I'm a Texan. I know good smoke flavor when I sees it!

As the roux darkens and thickens, take your chicken stock and slowly add it as you constantly stir. Constantly. Lumpy gravy is so old fashioned and unnecessary! You have to find your own perfect consistency here and it's all a fine balance of adding stock and reducing until you get there.

One final word of advice: do not attempt
to balance a heavy roaster against your
cardigan while cleaning the kitchen.
Chicken grease stains are almost guaranteed!

By now, your chicken's ready to be hacked apart. There are plenty of good resources on You Tube to show you just how to carve a bird and I had to watch the one from Cook's Illustrated about fifteen times before I got it right and didn't just hack the drumstick off like some crazy cavewoman. It's a great thing to know.

Easy right? Be warned, though, recovering from a meal like this is no easy feat. You're so busy with timetables and moving your food to the table that when you finally pick your head up and start clearing dishes, you might have a heart attack when you see the sorry state your kitchen is in. At least that's the case in my house. Lucky for me, P stopped off at the store and got my favorite Gnarly Head Old Vine Zin...which made everything better. Even clean up duty!

Happy eating!

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Thursdays with Kermit: Farm-to-Table with Full Circle Farm

It was 4 degrees outside when I opened this box.
Amazing, right?

Some days, being a blogger is a lot of fun.

There are weeks and weeks where I swear nobody but my mom (and even that's not always a given) reads this thing and knows I exist.

But then every once in a while, someone in the food community reaches out and makes a connection. Whether its a story idea, a chance to try a service or product, or even a discussion about a new food-related technology, when I make connections with other food lovers or food companies, its a thrill.

Full Circle Farm recently revamped it's delivery services here in Alaska and wanted me to give it a try. In a galaxy far, far away a long, long time ago I had two CSA boxes delivered to me mid-winter. I lasted two boxes mostly because the produce was half-frozen and nearly decomposed by the time I got it to my table. I don't blame the company, really, that's just the reality of delivery options a few years ago. But it wasn't really budget smart and with the new, strange vegetables staring at me from the dark, cardboard depths, I lacked the motivation to try new things. New recipes. New vegetables. Neither really interested me back then.

Fast forward a bunch of years (and one food blog) later.

I love cooking. I love being brave with new food.

 I hate the fact that much of the produce available at those huge super stores are GMO franken-fruits that look spray painted and don't EVER spoil. (WTH is that about? An apple is supposed to rot eventually, right?)

 Full Circle has a new array of boxes and sizes to fit everyone's unique needs and now feature "Green Groceries" like chocolate, coffee, artisan cheese and breads, and sweets you can add to your weekly orders. Oh yes, I was curious.

This is week one for us and I nabbed our box in blistering Anchorage winds. My first thought was of frostbitten carrots and wilted lettuce. (Unfounded fears, really. All of my produce was amazing.) I started small. We got the seed order (for one to two adults) just in case it was too much produce for me to handle--if it was full of stuff my family didn't eat or I didn't know how to cook it would be such a huge waste.

And in case you're wondering, this week's produce included: new potatoes, green beans, a pomegranate, D'anjou pears, pink lady apples, lacinto kale, carrots, and sweet dumpling squash.

They even have a feature that lets you select what NOT to put in your box. Are you curious what some of mine are?

Well, no beets (I swear I taste dirt when I eat them), turnips (I just don't get the point of these poor tubers), and okra (slimy, fuzzy little beast that I mistake for a jalapeno at first, fast glance. Ack!)

It was the kale that caught my eye initially in this first box. I've never known what to do with the hearty winter green (or any green that looked like you might need the jaws of a Bull Mastiff to chew through). It always looked so...exotic and bitter. And it wilts pretty quickly in my experience (you know, that one time I bought it for juicing puposes and didn't touch it for the first six days...at which point it decomposed into a stink bomb in my fridge. Eww.).

On a  whim Wednesday night, I sauteed a bit of the kale with some butter and wine and garlic to assuage my fears that kale is a bitter, beastly monster that is going to foul up my kitchen and my stomach.

News flash:

Kale is FANTASTIC with butter and garlic! (I'm sure it's fantastic all on its own, but I'm working in baby steps here.) Even P thought it was fantastic as we finagled over the last few bites.

Right before the booze.

I was so impressed, I decided to invite kale on a date with my favorite green kitchen accessory, Kermit. Yes folks, I made soup. Again. I'm sure the month will be over soon and you'll miss my soup posts, so enjoy them while November lasts!

I had it in my mind that I had some Italian sausage links left over in my fridge from a pasta dish earlier this week. I set about grabbing up all sorts of ingredients and arranging them on the counter, and when I went to grab the sausage, I chose that exact moment to remember the sausage sandwiches P made us for lunch Tuesday afternoon. Dang.

Lucky for me, I'm a hoarder and I found about a cup of diced prosciutto from yet another pasta meal not too long ago. (I love cured meats. I love pasta. Fact and fact.)

And believe it or not, all of the ingredients were leftovers of some sort or another. I didn't have to leave the comforts of my house and  brave the 9 degree weather to buy anything.

On to the soup...

Prosciutto and Kale Soup

Ingredients:

2 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 small onion, chopped finely
1 medium waxy potato diced into small cubes(Yukon is what I had)
A few handfuls of washed, chopped kale leaves
4 cups of chicken broth
Bouillon cube
2 tablespoons butter
1/2 cup dry white wine (I had Pinot Gris on hand)
1/2 tsp dried rosemary
salt and pepper to taste

Directions:

I started with the alliums and the potato. In your soup vessel, saute the garlic and the onion, along with the potato, in the butter for a few minutes until the garlic and onion turn clear. Toss in the prosciutto and slowly add the wine and rosemary. Simmer for about two or three minutes to soften the wine. Add your broth, enough water to make you happy and a bouillon cube if you think your base is a little weak.

I added the kale at this point and covered. It simmered on a low, roiling simmer for about 30 minutes to ensure the potatoes were cooked through. They were. I seasoned to taste, lamented the fact that this was the third awesome soup that I had no fancy, crusty bread to eat with, and got on with my life.

It was fantastic.

The majority of the box didn't last long, I'm afraid to say. I ate those pears pretty hastily. The boys got Pink Lady apple slices with their waffle breakfast yesterday. The boys AND I took down the beautiful carrots before any other veggie even made it out of the box for inspection. (Oops.) The potatoes and green beans are slated for Sunday's roast chicken dinner, and the pomegranate is just waiting for some inspiration. The two funky looking squash, well, I'm looking into ways to stuffing them with sausage and bread crumbs. Wish me luck.

So, go forth and make soup, lovelies! And a million thanks to the farmers and folks at Full Circle for doing what they do. Could you imagine a life without farm food? More on that later.

Happy eating!

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Pumpkin Pie Cupcakes with Chai Buttercream Frosting

With a capital C.

Can I get a heck yeah?!

If that title alone didn't get you jazzed about this post, you better check your pulse, m'friend. 'Cause we're talking Cupcakes with a capital C!

(Unless you don't like pumpkin, and then, well, it's ok. I forgive you, even.)

We stay on a pretty even straight-and-narrow when it comes to baking around here. Chocolate chip cookies for P and the boys. Ginger Crinkles for me. Peanut butter cookies for me and P. I rarely venture off just because I'm a big ol' chicken and I have night terrors about eating an entire batch of cookies by myself because my family has shunned them. (My fears are kind enough to constantly look out for my vanity. Sweet, right?)

But I stumbled across a recipe for pumpkin muffins that piqued my interest. Partly because my husband is a fanatic about pumpkin pies but mostly because I had a ton of canned pumpkin in the fridge from a failed attempt at pumpkin pancakes earlier in the week. Something had to be done use up that poor, neglected pumpkin.

We don't need no stinkin' stand mixer!

Something, indeed. From the land of one and a half-ton pumpkins, comes something truly worth that blessed squash's orangey goodness.

 I adapted the recipe into cupcakes by upping the sugar a bit and tinkering with the airiness of the crumb with the pain-in-the-butt mixing process.

(OK, it wasn't that bad. But I'm more of a dump-and-go sort of girl, so alternating ingredients as I mix them is definitely a step toward fussiness in my opinion.)

As ever, my constant kitchen companion Boo was my faithful helper, jabbing chubby toddler fingers into the batter and swiping my mixers fresh out of the bowl. I love that kid.

On to the cupcakes...

Pumpkin Pie Cupcakes with Chai Buttercream Frosting

Cupcakes:
1.5 cups all-purpose, unbleached flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1.5 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon each of ginger, clove, and nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup butter, room temperature
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
2 eggs
1.5 teaspoon vanilla extract
3/4 cup canned pumpkin

Directions:

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Line muffin tin with paper liners. Yields about 18 cupcakes.

Double sift flour, baking soda, spices, and salt into a medium sized bowl and set aside. In large mixing bowl, cream butter and sugars well with a mixer. Add eggs one at a time and mix well before adding next. Add vanilla and mix well again, allowing the batter to expand slightly.

Here's where we get the extra work for the extra payoff:

To your butter/egg/sugar mixing bowl, alternate 1/3 of your flour with 1/3 of the canned pumpkin into the bowl. Repeat two more times, making sure you end with the last of the flour mixture. Add batter to individual tins, about 2/3 full. Bake 18-20 minutes and allow to cool completely.

Icing:
2 tablespoons of strongly brewed chai tea, cooled completely
1/2 cup butter, room temperature
4 cups confectioners sugar
1/4 cup cold milk

Combine ingredients and mix on high for 2-3 minutes. Spread on cooled cupcakes.

Happy eating!

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Thursdays with Kermit: Split Pea Stew with Ham

Kermit the Pot with the early trappings of a fantastic green soup.

Just so we're clear, the Kermit part of my Thursday is NOT the soup. I didn't puree Kermit and make green soup. I swear!

Kermit is the name of my beloved, avocado green Dutch Oven. My makeshift soup pot I've just happened to have been hanging out with the past few Thursdays.

See, I am home with the tiniest tribe members on Tuesdays and Thursdays. On Tuesdays, I'm still feeling a tad industrious and I'm usually cleaning. By Thursday, chances are I'm stressed out from the office job and couldn't care less if the toilets need a good scrub or what state the cat box is in downstairs. I just want comfort food and Jane Austen movies on the DVD player.

I've stated before I'm pretty much the only soup eater in the house at the moment, but I'm optimistic that one of these days, I'll hit a home run with Kermit that will get the entire gang on the soup bandwagon. One of these days.

About a month ago, I was at the grocery store and bought a bag of split peas. I have no clue why. My mom makes the BEST split pea soup and maybe I missed her and maybe the fact that they only cost $1.09 for the pound struck a nerve with my broke self. Who knows. Point is, I had them. And remembered them. And combine that with the fact that a guest brought over and entire cooked ham last weekend, and well, ingredients for a perfect split pea party...and Kermit's the guest of honor.

I searched high and low for recipes and they all seemed too fancy. I remember my mom's soup as being low-maintenance. None of this "herb bouquet" nonsense or the need to blend the damn thing with oven mitts and a face mask for protection against scalding hot splatters from the blender. No way.

I tried to decipher what the hell a ham hock was with no success. Was it that ginormous ham bone in the bowl with the gelatinous goo hanging from it? Aren't ham hocks the round things my dad used to throw at the dogs, who would subsequently yak it up on the living room carpet a few hours later? (Sorry. TMI. Guilty as charged.)

Mom's made plenty of batches of the stuff with no mystery hock in sight, so I rough chopped as much ham as I felt I needed and tossed it in. So there. It's my soup. I'll toss the disgusting ham jello in there if I feel like it! (But I don't, so no worries.)

This soup is perfect for days like today in Alaska. It's snowing  heavily. I don't have to go anywhere until later this afternoon when it's time to rescue the second grader from the giant snow pile known as elementary school. And I'm hungry. Hungry and in need of a "food hug" from Kermit.

I call this a stew only because it's not pureed. The onions remained onions, the peas remained peas. No minced garlic clove was liquefied in the making of this soup. It's rustic whereas the traditional version has to be passed through a sieve a few times. (Annoying, right?)

On to the soup...

Split Pea Stew with Ham

2.5 cups of rinsed and picked over split peas
5 cups of water
1 small onion, chopped
3 cloves garlic, minced
2 teaspoons of thyme
Bay leaf
1 tsp salt (more or less, to taste)
Pepper, to taste
Ham hock (seriously, it always goes back to the ham hock) or 2 cups chopped, left over ham

Is this the hock? Or is this the bone?
Darn you, mysterious meat pieces!

I rinsed the peas and looked for stones. Once we were clear of any filling-shattering abnormalities, I tossed the peas into Kermit, doused them with water and started the stove on medium. While the water and peas heated, I chopped my onion and garlic and put them in the hot tub. To that, I added the bay leaf, ham, and thyme, some salt and pepper. You're going to need to season to taste again once the soup has cooked.

I left the soup on the stove in a light simmer for an hour and twenty minutes before checking on it. (Have you met my children? You'd understand how I could forget a simmering soup that long.) It was perfect. No blender needed. Crusty artisan bread? Sure. But remember who you're talking to here...I'm a sandwich bread sort of girl with Fred Meyer butter. And it still makes me happy.

Happy eating!

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