Petrified Pea Soup

A couple of days ago my mom called me to talk for awhile. We ended up talking for a couple of hours and it was wonderful to catch up on the news from home, and laugh and cry together. It's always been very easy for me to talk to my mom about pretty much anything. Sometimes she laughs with me, sometimes she cries with me, sometimes she scolds me a little, sometimes she praises me glowingly, but always, she tells me how much she loves me and how she's missed me over the years. It's been over thirty-seven years since I left home for college and although we've visited back and forth many times, it's still been a long distance relationship. I've truly missed my mom and dad during those years and only now that I have three of my five kids living out of state do I truly understand how much they've missed me and my family. Like I've said in previous posts, I loving going to visit my family members or having them come to visit me but no matter where I am, I'm missing someone else!
Anyway, just as we were wrapping up our conversation my mom said, "Let me tell you a quick story before we say good-bye." And then she told me about her ill-fated attempt to make some Quebec style split pea soup. She found the recipe in a magazine while she was waiting her turn at a doctor's office. By the time she finished her "split pea disaster story" I was laughing so hard that I was crying. I could picture the whole debacle. Like a scene out of "I Love Lucy". My mom is a wonderful cook (even though she doesn't think so anymore) and has made hundreds of pots of great soup, and other things over the years. I think the problem here is that the split peas she was using had been part of her food storage for way too many years and were truly petrified. I asked her to send me the recipe and to write down the story, which she did and I am now going to post. So this one's for you, Mom. You are my guest writer today. Thanks for giving me a much needed belly laugh. The following arrived in an email today:

Dear Sandra,
Here is the "QUEBEC STYLE PEA SOUP" Recipe.

1 ham hock

8 cups water

2 carrots

2 ribs celery

1 onion (diced)

2 cloves of garlic (minced)

1 3/4 cups dried yellow split peas (MAKE SURE THEY HAVEN'T BEEN IN YOUR FOOD STORAGE FOR 10 YEARS LIKE MINE)

2 Bay Leaves

1 tsp dried Savory or Thyme

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon pepper

Combine 8 cups water and ham hock and split peas and seasonings and boil for 1 1/2 to 2 hours (Maybe longer)

Cook onions, celery and garlic in 2 tsps of butter until soft and golden

Add all the vegetables to the cooked split peas during the last 3/4 of an hour of the cooking time.

It looks like a simple recipe but don't let it fool you. IT IS A KILLER.

Here's what happened to me: I sent your dad to the store to get me a ham hock. He came back with pork hocks so I used them.I boiled them for an hour and then I put the split peas in with the hocks. I boiled them and boiled them and the peas stayed hard. Now I really should have seen the warning sign that those peas were not going to soften up. However, being an eternal optimist, I carefully removed the port hocks (disgusting things to look at especially as I noticed a cluster of pig bristles still on the skin of one, and being raised on a farm, I know where their feet had been!) I skinned the hocks and cut the meat into bite size pieces and threw them back in with the peas. An hour later the peas still weren't done so I had to pick out all the meat pieces because the decision was made to puree the soup and then put the meat back in. BIG MISTAKE. All the soup wouldn't go in the blender at once SO I put SOME of the hot soup in the blender (before it cooled off . . . rookie mistake), I turned on the blender and the lid blew off the blender and split peas flew EVERYWHERE. Now the peas that wouldn't fit in the blender I had left on the stove with the burner still on. Needless to say they had burned to the bottom of the pan, which took some doing (two days and lots of elbow grease) to get that pan clean. Long story shortened: I spent the next two hours washing that puree from every imaginable crevice in the kitchen and the stove! The soup went in the slop bucket (note - my parents were friends of the earth and environmentalists long before it became trendy. The "slop bucket" mom refers to is an old plastic ice cream bucket into which they throw all of their peelings, leftovers and kitchen scraps. They used to compost it but the coyotes were wandering out of the rain forest and into the yard to feast on the compost pile so now they have curbside organic recycling pick-up). We tried to eat some of it but it all ended up in the slop bucket. I was so mad I couldn't even talk. Just went to bed and slept and was just happy I didn't have nightmares. I never want to to even hear about Pea Soup for the rest of my life. Love you, mom

Thanks for being my guest writer today, Mom. Feel free to contribute any time! Til next time.