Split Pea Soup

I am now going to share with you my mother's recipe for split pea soup. She got it from my grandmother. You and I are not going to tell anyone that Grandma got it from the back of a bag of green split peas, then tweaked it, are we? Now you know where I got my recipe stealing, er, borrowing, skills from. That is what has been passed down to me from generation to generation.

Green Split Pea Soup with Ham
1 lb. of green split peas (use yellow if you have been watching movies you shouldn't have been. If you still can't deal, look on the back of a package of lentils, and tweak that)
8 cups of water
1 meaty ham bone
1 cup of chopped ham
1 large onion, chopped
3 stalks of celery, chopped
3 carrots, scraped and chopped
a pinch of salt
2 garlic cloves, minced
Wash, sort, and drain split peas. Combine all ingredients in a large pot with lid. Bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer covered for about 1 hour or until cooked through, stirring occasionally. Before serving, remove ham from the bone. Cut ham off bone, and dice. Add to the soup and serve.

When you go to a restaurant, you get a cup this as the soup of the day sometimes with your meal. A full bowl of this is a meal in itself. Sometimes it is hard to think of soup as a meal. If that is a problem for you, think of it as ham and pea stew. Now you can serve it as a meal, no?