Leftover Holiday Ham Split Pea Soup

If your family is like mine, every holiday get-together involves some ham.  And there are always leftovers sent home with various recipients.

And, if your like me, that ham sits in your refrigerator for a day or two waiting for a decision.  You can have ham-on-bun for days on end (I've recently done that and it wasn't pleasant), throw it in the freezer and parcel it out, have it for dinner with a different side for several days or make soup!

I've been reading a slow cooker (or crock-pot) recipe book titled, "Make it Fast, Cook it Slow", by Stephanie O'Dea and used her recipe (pg. 208) for split pea crock-pot soup as a guide.  The only change I made was to use leftover ham slices rather than the bacon or ham hock she suggests.

These are the ingredients I added to the crock-pot:

I started with a pound of organic split peas from our local health foods store for about $2.75 and soaked them with water overnight in the refrigerator -- though soaking isn't necessary if you plan to have them in the crock-pot for 8 hours.  For soaking, I placed mine in a large bowl and covered with water about 2 inches deep.

Next I diced up 1/2 a yellow onion, 1 potato (peeled), and 1 cup of carrot.

 I didn't have vegetable broth on hand, so I used 4 cups of organic chicken stock from Costco.

 I cut the leftover ham slices into chunked pieces reserving some ham to add in later.

Next, I threw it all in a 6-quart crock-pot along with an additional cup of water a tsp. of salt and a bit of fresh ground black pepper and cooked it on low for 6 hours (you may need two more hours if you didn't pre-soak your peas).

After six hours of low and slow cooking, I ladled the ingredients into the Vitamix Blender and blended on high for about 20-seconds before returning the smooth and creamy soup to the crock-pot.





I then added some additional ham chucks to the soup for texture and put the crock-pot on warm until we were ready to serve it!







A delicious and satisfying post-holiday soup for those cold winter days!

S'mores Pancakes

The plates were licked clean with this one!  I had to stop our son from eating for fear he might explode.  :)

From the "Cooking for Isaiah" gluten-free and dairy-free cookbook on page 25.  This is almost too much like a dessert, but very good for the occasional breakfast.

If you're not cooking gluten and dairy free, just whip up your favorite batch of pancake mix and throw in 1/2 cup of mini-chocolate chips before throwing them on the griddle.

The idea of whipping some "Fluff" (find in the dessert or marshmallow isle of your favorite grocery store) with hot water was great and worked well as a pancake topping.  Use 1 cup of Fluff and 2 Tbs. of boiling water and stir until smooth. While I wouldn't classify Fluff as a health food, the ingredient list is minimal and understandable which is a significant difference from it's bigger brand counterpart.

Have Fun!

Cooking for Isaiah Corn-Shrimp Fritters

Okay - page 67 of "Cooking for Isaiah".  I thought the kids would like this one.  No dice!  It wasn't because of the taste, because they didn't even try.  My wife and I enjoyed them though.  They were not quite perfect (for us), so here are a few changes I will implement next time:

1.  I found the frying time to be longer than 3 minutes -- actually closer to 5-7.  Let your eyes and senses guide you on this one.
2.  The flavor was a bit bland.  I will double the cilantro, chili-powder and cumin in the next attempt.
3.  I would recommend a bit less salsa and a bit more mayonnaise for the dipping sauce.

I scooped the batter with my Zerroll scoop and the fell nicely into the oil and fried into nice fairly crisp balls of goodness.

My one mistake, I let the blades spin too long in the food processor, eliminating most bigger chunks of shrimp.  Be very careful to either mix the chopped shrimp by hand, or give just a couple of quick "pulses" in the food processor.

Enjoy this one!

Food Sensitivities

My wife's doctor recently suggested that some of her ailments may be related to sensitivities to some foods. A blood test confirmed that she does have sensitivities to gluten, dairy and a few other items to a lesser degree.

His suggestion was to go dairy and gluten free for a while and see how much better she might feel.

As the primary cook for our family, I was not happy to learn of my new cooking limitations.  After all, I was just feeling comfortable with the variety of wheat flours and cheeses we had incorporated into our meals.

I went kicking and screaming to our health food store in search of answers and options and my wife grabbed a bunch of cookbooks from the library.

In future posts I will write about my findings regarding individual gluten free items and brands, but for now, I want to mention that we are working our way through the "Cooking for Isaiah" cookbook with good success and rave reviews.  Many of the cookbooks I have found address one food allergy.  This one eliminates both dairy and gluten.

The things I like about this cookbook include great photography of many of the dishes.  If you are like me, I am a visual learner in cooking.  I like to know what the end product should look like.  It helps me in the preparation stages of a meal.  I also like the fact that most of these meals are family friendly, meaning that the smallest kids will love the meals.  And, many of the meals are easy to prepare and take minimal time -- or even better, can be made ahead.

What I don't like has nothing to do with the food, but rather what appear to be a significant editorial error on page 15.  Silvana shares her flour blend that is used in recipes throughout the book.  She then also adds a pancake blend version of the main blend for the waffle and pancake recipes in her book.  I am certain that rather than the 9 cups of flour blend, she really means 3.

I will start posting photos as we work our way through each recipe, but two weeks into making the various recipes, I can say that this newly purchased cookbook will be used a lot by our family.