Split Pea Soup

Split pea soup with carrots, potatoes and sausage

Soup has been hitting the spot lately.  Today for lunch, I prepared a simple split pea soup.

Ingredients:

1 cup dried split green peas

1 bay leaf

1 large carrot, peeled and chopped/shredded

1 potato - I used a left over baked potato

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 bit of ham or sausage or none at all

salt and pepper to taste

Rinse and add split peas and bay leaf to a medium sauce pan with 4 cups of water.  Bring to a boil, then simmer with the partially for about 1.5 hours, or until the peas are soft.

In the meantime, prepare the carrots, potato and sausage.

Because my potato was already baked, I just quick "fried" the potato cubes in a bit of olive oil.  If my potato wasn't already cooked, I would have roasted the potato with olive oil on a sheet pan in a 400F oven for 40 minutes.

Once the peas are soft, start adding the other ingredients or puree the soup.  I like my soups smooth so I poured the peas, minus the bay leaf into my Vitamix blender.  If mostly pureed is OK, use a stick blender.  Or just leave it as is - rustic.

After blending smooth, the peas were a bit thick so I added another cup of water plus the chopped carrots that were microwaved for 3 minutes in a bit of water to soften.

Peas with carrots.

Adding the sausage and potatoes, season with salt and pepper and serve when it's all hot and cooked through.

We had snow again and as I was preparing this soup, Craig was out shoveling more snow.  Craig appreciated a hot bowl of soup and buttered toast for lunch.

Astrid

Weight Watchers: 10 PointsPlus for split peas, 6 for the sausage, 5 for potato and 3 for the olive oil for a total of 24 points for the pan.  This made 5 nice sized serving for 5 PointsPlus each.