Split Pea Soup

A hearty, healthy easy to make soup that warms and fills your belly. It is delicious with the perfect texture. Full of fiber and nutrients and flavor!

Don’t ever throw your ham bone out again during the Holidays. Put it in a freezer bag and freeze it until you are ready to make this soup.

What if I don’t have a ham bone?

• If you don’t have a ham bone you can use a ham hock instead and follow the recipe as directed.
• If you don’t have a ham bone or ham hock, dice up some thick cut ham and add it to the soup before serving.
• You could also fry up some bacon and use the bacon by itself or add it with some ham. When it’s cooked, remove it from the pot and cook your onion in a reserved tablespoon of the bacon drippings. Crumble the bacon and stir in right before serving.
• You could also use a smoked turkey leg and follow the recipe as directed.

To Soak the Peas or Not to Soak?

This soup simmers for around 2 hours and then is ready to enjoy. You can soak the split peas overnight in 3 cups of water to 1 cup of peas to speed up the cooking time. The soup should be ready in about 40 minutes instead of an hour and a half to two hours. I didn’t do this because I usually don’t decide what I want to eat until the day of haha.

The peas only need to be cooked until tender but if you want a smoother soup continue to simmer until they fall apart. You can also use an immersion blender or puree a couple of cups of the soup in blender at the end of the cooking time to get a smooth soup.

Arctic Temperatures at the TY Ranch

The past five days have been trying for Texas and neighboring states. Temperatures plummeted to zero and did not get above freezing until today. Snow and ice covered the land. Ty has never seen anything like this happen at the ranch but some Facebook friends said a winter storm occurred here in 1983 where temperatures didn’t get above freezing for a week.

It’s disastrous for southern states that aren’t prepared for this type of weather. The night the storm blew in we were awoken at 2:30 am by the power going out. Ty tried to report the outage to the electric company but the phone lines were down. We turned out our gas logs to keep the house warm because we didn’t know how long we would be out of power. About 45 minutes later the power turned back on. This continued through the night. I got out of bed at 5 am and turned on the news and saw that we were a part of rolling blackouts. What? I learned that Texas’s electric grid could not keep up with the demand for power so to keep an “uncontrolled” blackout from occurring they were rolling out controlled blackouts. They were aiming to keep the power on for any sections that included hospitals, etc. Some people never lost power, some lost power intermittently like us, and some lost power completely for days.

When the power goes out the trouble really begins. The electric heaters or heat lamps we were using in the well house, pool house, shop, and anywhere else we were trying to keep pipes from freezing would turn off. Ty had to go get our propane heaters and change out the propane bottles every two hours.

Our water shut off the next day. We later saw water leaking from the well house and Ty saw the water softener pipe had burst. He bypassed the water softener line and our water came back on. Thank goodness! I broke ice for our pets by the house but after two days the trough of water froze solid. We had to haul water out to our barn casts, pig, sheep, chickens and mini horses. They stayed warm enough with extra hay and shelters to block the north winds. If animals are used to being outside you really don’t have to worry too much over them if they are young and healthy & have access to water, food and shelter. Animals have been living outside for forever.

I didn’t put a heat lamp out for my chickens and they were all fine. The heat lamp wouldn’t have done much good without power anyways. Ty joked when I mentioned putting a heat lamp out for the chickens and said “Birds have been living outside for a million years.” I said “True but birds also migrate.” Ty said “Not chickens, they don’t migrate.” I said “True, but they are usually kept in a chicken house.” He said “We have a chicken house.” Not ready to let it go yet I said “I meant a fully enclosed chicken house.” He shook his head. Our chickens were fine. A few days later I saw a dead tweety bird in the yard that had froze to death. I said “See Ty they can freeze to death.” He said “I bet he was thinking Dang it, I AM South.” Even the birds didn’t expect this weather to hit Texas.

Our ranch manager had to haul barrels of water to our horses who were in pastures without a natural water supply. He had to break the ice in our ponds for the cows. He had to drive out a good ways to accomplish this. When he went to bust the ice with the bucket on the tractor the ice was so thick it stopped the bucket and the tractor lifted up.

We did have a scare with our senior horse, Riley. He began to colic. Ty gave him two doses of Banamine. The next morning he still didn’t seem to feel well. Ty called a vet and he came out as soon as possible after getting his diesel truck to start (by putting kerosene in the tank). That’s another thing we found out, diesel will gel and the trucks won’t start in this cold weather. Time to find some anti-gel solution. The vet intubated him with water, electrolytes, oil and pepto. Riley seems all better now thank goodness.

Anyways, it’s starting to melt and temperatures will reach almost 70 next week. The beauty of Texas weather!

Resilience

I often think about the woman who said her brother was born in our barn/house. I think about our ancestors and all they endured. It’s hard to complain about the power and internet going out and not having water when that’s how many of our ancestors lived 100 years ago. I ready a book called “The Worst Hard Time” a couple years ago about all those who endured and survived during the dust bowl. It is incredibly inspiring and I highly recommend it. It does something for my mentality when I find myself wanting to complain to think of Our Ancestors, the Native Americans, the Pioneers who overcame such trials and tribulations which is the reason we are here today. We have that blood running in our own bodies. The grit, the toughness, the resilience we just have to remember that.

I made a family history book for Oakley and found out so many fascinating, inspiring stories about her bloodlines. Here is a story ya’ll may enjoy about Clara Lydbbill Schriner. She is Ty’s Mom, Joy Myers’, Grandmother. This makes her Oakley’s Great Great Grandmother. Andrew and Anna are Clara’s parents.

Perfect for COLD Days

Ok back to the soup! Because we have a gas stove, I was able to continue to cook, sometimes by light of my headlamp. I would have to manually light the pilot on the stove but once it was lit it stayed on. The soup was warming and delicious.

Split Pea Soup

Recipe by Paige MurrayCourse: SoupsCuisine: AmericanDifficulty: Easy

Servings

6

servings

Prep time

10

minutes

Cooking time

2

hours 

Calories

273

kcal

Protein

26 g

Carbs

52 g

Fiber

20

Fats

3

A delicious, hearty, healthy bowl of soup to fill your belly!

Ingredients

• 1 ham bone (or 2 ham hocks, 2 cups diced thick cut ham or a smoked Turkey leg)

• 1 onion, diced

• 3 stalks celery, diced

• 1/2 bag (5 oz) matchstick carrots or about 3 large carrots diced into 1/4 inch thick.

• 1 tablespoon bacon grease or avocado oil

• 4 cups chicken stock

• 4 cups water

• 1 pound bag of split peas

• 1 bay leaf

• 1/2 teaspoon ground cumin

• 1-2 teaspoons salt (Start with 1 teaspoon and add more after adding the ham back to the soup)

• 1/4 teaspoon garlic powder

• 1 teaspoon black pepper

• 1 teaspoon dried oregano

Directions

• I think I’m supposed to tell you to rinse and discard debris in the split peas but I never do haha.
• In a large soup pot, sautée the onion and celery in a tablespoon of oil.
• Add the remaining ingredients to the pot.
• Bring to a boil.
• Reduce to a low simmer and let simmer about 1.5-2 hours. The peas only need to be cooked until tender but if you want a smoother soup continue to simmer until they are soft and fall apart. Stir a couple of times. You may need to lift the bone out to do this.
• Remove the ham bone. When it has cooled a bit, remove the meat from the bone and dice into bite sized pieces.
• Remove the bay leaf.
• If you want a smoother soup, use an immersion blender for about 5 seconds or add about about 2 cups of the soup to a blender to purée then stir back into the soup to get a smoother texture soup.
• If you want a thinner soup add more water. If you want a thicker soup let it simmer longer.
• Stir diced ham back into the soup and then taste for salt and pepper as the ham can be salty.
• Enjoy with a piece of buttery toast!

Notes

• Nutrition calculated using 2 cups of diced ham and HEB Chicken Stock.