OMGosh pea soup

I love love love pea soup almost more than anything else to eat in the world...if a restaurant says they are serving pea soup that day, I am in pig's heaven and will almost always order just a big bowl of pea soup...

ate it a lot growing up...but, always from a can...and if we were out of enough cans to feed 12 kids, my mom would mix it with a can of tomato soup and actually was pretty good...

now, pea soup from a can is good if that is all you have been used to...and Tim can make a mean pea soup from a can...if he is home, I always have him make it...not sure what he does to it, but, it comes out really good...but OMGosh if you can make it, you must try it...and it really was not that much trouble...

so, over New Year's we had a ham and I saved the bone, thinking I would make pea soup with it...now, I have made homemade pea soup before but, it was just all right nothing special...so, I waited to long to use the ham bone but, pea soup just sounded good today...

so I made it for dinner...

split pea soup

1 bag of split peas (in the bean section of your store)

8 cups of water

now on the package it says to wash and rinse your peas and I wasn't sure why, but I googled it and they said there can be little rocks in with your peas...so I rinsed...

put the 8 cups of water and peas in big pan and boil for 2 minutes...then take off the heat, covered for 1 hour...then put back on to boil then simmer for 1 more hour, in the pan I also added 1 cut up onion...

I don't like the chunks of the split peas so I blended a little at a time with some milk to help it blend...

I then added some cut up potatoes, carrots, bacon and some ham...

this was the absolute best pea soup I have ever had and Tim liked it too...

so with that I had some left over chicken from the chicken pie and I decided to make

waldorf chicken salad

I diced up 2 cooked chicken breast

diced up 5 stalks of celery

diced up 2 granny smith apples (& I leave the skins on)

added cranberries, walnuts and enough mayo to taste...

this also was very good tonight and wonderful on some homemade bread..I got Tim some pita bread to take to work with the waldorf salad...my mom made this many times when I was a kid...