Pea Soup...sort of....

Miss Mary Jane Daisy Euphemia Darling Dawson is often fed some sort pea soup while staying in the wilds of Holland. Or Friesland. While acknowledging the heartiness and warmth of pea soup, she usually isn't much of a fan. I can't say I blame her. I can eat pea soup - but not too often, the flavor is a bit strong for regular consumption - and has more than a bit of a tendency to "repeat" on one. Betty Keira and I have our own version...it's hearty and warming on a chilly evening, but it doesn't have quite the burpitude that straight pea soup has. I came up with this recipe last year while recovering from The Unfortunate Incident With Roller-Skates. Here is the recipe I posted:

It's hard to get fancy with cooking when you only have one arm to work with...so my crockpots have been doing the "heavy lifting" this past week. My family, for the most part, is fairly tolerant about meals (Danny being the lesser part...). Today's effort was a little bit of a gamble. I had the leftover ham bone from Sunday's awesome ham, and I wanted to make soup with it. Usually I would use it to make lentil soup - everyone in my family will eat it - Nathan especially seems to love it. Well, my lentil soup recipe calls for some chopped onion and carrots. Chopping vegetables isn't on my current list of activities. So I tried something different.

Beanland Soup with Ham

2-3 cups "Beanland" mix, rinsed (I pick it up in the bulk section of Winco (supermarket chain in the Western US)- it doesn't have beans in it - it does have a couple of varieties of lentils, split peas, rice, barley, and maybe two or three other things)
1 meaty ham bone
8-10 cups of water (you can add more later on if it looks too thick)
3+ teaspoons "Better Than Bouillon" (chicken flavor)
small handful dehydrated onion
small handful dehydrated carrots
seasoning - I used rosemary, thyme, parsley and a little pepper
Dump it all in a crockpot and cook for 4 or 5 hours.

I wouldn't bother to post this recipe except that Daniel ate 3 bowls of it. One of those AFTER I admitted to the onions and he figured out there were split peas in it.

I'm sure you could make this with fresh vegetables, but I have to say, it's lovely to have such a no-fuss recipe. The Zombie Bride has made this soup with boneless, skinless chicken breasts (pre-cooked and seasoned with Mrs. Dash) and cooked it on the stove-top for about 1 hour (she started the Beanland stuff before cooking the chicken, then threw the chicken in with the Beanland when the chicken was cooked).