For the last several weeks I have been making pot after pot of pea and ham soup, freezing it in little batches, or serving it to friends and family, but mainly eating it myself. I just can’t seem to get enough of it!
I take it into the nursing home and share it with Anthony often. He is a ruthless great food critic. Some of my experimental additions weren’t very successful; for example, the addition of chilli, mint, capsicums and curry powder didn’t work. I mean it was edible, but it just wasn’t pea and ham soup the way it’s supposed to be, you know?
Having run out of my last batch, I over-enthusiastically over-filled the slow cooker and had to transfer half of the ingredients to another big saucepan before the kitchen floor became a lake of pea and ham soup. So now I have two simmering pots filling the empty house with aroma.
The usual ingredients are split peas, chopped vegetables (onions, garlic, celery, but not capsicums) and, of course, a ham hock. But I do have one extra secret ingredient and I think this makes MY pea and ham soup superior, ha!
Tomorrow, the answer to this conundrum will be posted, as well as a photo shoot of the finished soup. I am hoping that, universally, kitchens, restaurants, food journalists, and people with nothing else to do, will clamour at my blog-door.
But that probably won’t happen because I’ll take a small batch of this big new batch of pea and ham soup into the nursing home and Anthony will taste it and just say, “Not bad” and then we will have the following argument:
Me: What do you mean ‘Not bad’? Why can’t you ever say it’s fantastic or wonderful?
Anthony: Because it’s, well ….
Me: What?
Anthony: Ordinary.
Almost every day, I go in and sit next to Ants, watch television, chill out, answer emails, wrestle with my iPad, for several hours – and he and I have these strange, fragmented, haphazard, conversations. Sometimes it seems really lazy to just sit there with him, always with my hand on his arm, watching Dr Phil then going back to our current series, West Wing.
He is sleepier and sleepier every day this week. I wonder what next week will be like apart from a surplus of pea and ham soup.
Next week will be ordinary, and ordinary is a joy.
jmgoyder 