The longest soup ever

What's that saying about the best laid plans of mice and men? Every Sunday I sit down and menu plan, making sure that my more time consuming experiments are scheduled for the weekend when I don't have less than 2 hours to make dinner, eat it, and get my stuff ready for the next day before going to bed.

So I saw a recipe for split pea soup a couple weeks ago on some blog and knew I wanted to try it out - I'd never had it before. I looked through a bunch of different recipes and noted it was a bit of a time consuming soup, so I scheduled it for Sunday night's dinner.

So Sunday afternoon I went to make the soup, and realized I'd forgotten to soak the beans in water overnight. Sigh. So much for soup for dinner. So peas were soaked overnight. However, there was no way this soup was going to be cooked and ready Monday night in my short cooking window. Especially since I'm a soup puree-er and for the sake of good neighbor relations I don't use the loudest appliance in the world after 9pm. Which means the soup was cooked on Monday night, and then chilled overnight.

Tuesday night I finally finished the soup. This is a soup 3 days in the making. It had better be worth it. The results? Well I was pleasantly surprised. I was worried I wouldn't like pea soup, but it was really good and creamy. And Jon loved it so much he went back for seconds. He may even have licked the bowl. And then he cleaned up the kitchen for me! This soup has super powers. (By the way, I topped the soup with a little nonfat plain yogurt and the playboy bunny design was completely unintentional)Split Pea Soup

1/4 lb dried split peas
1/2 strip of bacon fat (separated from bacon)
1 clove garlic, minced
1/2 onion, chopped
1 stalk celery, chopped
1 /2 leek, trimmed and chopped
32 oz chicken broth
1 Tbsp dried thyme
1/2 pkg frozen peas, thawed

1) Soak dried peas in cold water overnight.
2) Heat bacon fat in soup pot over medium-low heat.
3) Add garlic, onion, celery, and leek. Cook about 15 minutes.
4) Add chicken broth, dried peas, and thyme. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer partially covered for 1.5 hours. Let cool completely.
5) Add thawed peas and puree in food processor until smooth. Return to pot and heat over medium heat until warmed through.

Serves 4.
Each serving has:

Calories		145.6
Total Fat		3.0 g
Cholesterol		2.5 mg
Sodium		1,621.4 mg
Potassium		632.1 mg
Total Carbohydrate		14.5 g
Protein		15.4 g