Saturday's Soup

I woke up just before 6:00 AM on Saturday. I was lazy and read my book until after 8:00 PM. Still in my robe, I went out back and checked the rain gauge and found we got just over one inch of rain here in Redford on Friday.

I went back inside then and ground up some fresh 8'Oclock Colombian coffee beans and made a pot of coffee.

I posted the Blog and a remembrance about the Sea Snark sailboat (God, I had fun in that thing! It's why I still harbor hopes of resurrecting the sailboat out back...)

Jake popped in to replace a network card (or something) in my computer. He was on his way home from a mathematics test at college. When he got it installed, he split.

I washed the bedding and then answered the phone. It was my friend B___ and we talked about options for either him or me in Michigan (either slim or none). I must admit, it is difficult to go from being a Vice-President, with total control over marketing, sales and the life and death of 60+ employees to working part time with no benefits... Where the fu*k did I go wrong? I'm beginning to believe I didn't do anything "wrong," I just got old.

Be that as it may, I warmed up my old employee's pumpkin soup for lunch. It was good but, way too sweet. I will tell her it was great, but for me, I would have added a lot more salt and pepper and maybe thyme.

I took a two hour nap around 4:00 PM. When I woke up, I started making tonight's dinner: split pea soup.

So, I had sorted through a pound of split peas (looking for rocks) Friday night and left them soaking in a big bowl. I rinsed them, drained the peas and let them sit a bit.

Now, if you have a recipe and good ingredients, it's pretty easy to make a great dish. But, I think the art of being a good cook is to figure out how to improvise when you don't have the right ingredients. Here's my dilemma. I have made this soup a hundred times (my Mom loved it). But, I always used a smoked ham hock. I have no ham hock this time, just a 1/2 inch thick ham slice.

So, instead of butter, I saut�ed the onion in bacon fat (for the smoky flavor). Then I added the carrots and celery (both fine diced). After about three minutes, I added two teaspoons of minced garlic and cooked that another half minute or so.

I rinsed off the ham slice (remember, it was too salty the last time) and then tasted a little piece of it. Not bad! I cut it into four large pieces and added it to the pot.

I added the drained peas and some pepper and let that get happy for a few minutes. Then I dumped in eight cups of homemade chicken stock, a bay leaf and some fresh thyme from out back. I let that cook down for about one hour, until the peas were mush.

Meanwhile, I made some cheesy-garlic biscuits. I am not sure where I went off in the weeds with these (I used cold milk and cold butter, like the recipe said. I think I overworked the batter and released too much gluten.) but when they came out of the oven, they were like bricks!

Meanwhile, when the soup was about done, I dug out the four ham pieces and cut them into 1/2 chunks. I reserved them and used my immersion blender to puree the soup. Then I added the ham back in.

I plated a bowl and added two biscuits. I went in to watch "Rio Bravo" an old John Wayne movie that also starred Dean Martin, Ricky Nelson and Walter Brennan (for some reason, I relate to Walter Brennan these days).

The soup was excellent, the biscuits crap and when the movie was over, I went to bed.