Split pea and ham soup

Having Jeff home on holidays for the past week had been awesome. He decided he was going to make a big pot of soup today; I didn't object!

I couldn't quite keep track of everything he was doing over by the stove but I give you a brief play by play.

We had a ham bone from his moms thanksgiving dinner.  He combined that with a link of farmers sausage, about 7 litres of water, bay leaf, thyme, parsley and sage.  He let that simmer for an hour.

After an hour he strained this liquid and set it aside.  He chopped the farmers sausage link and set it aside for later.  

Back in the empty pot he sautéed chopped carrot, celery, onion and garlic.

To this he added 4 cups of dried split peas, the chopped sausage and the pork stock that he had set aside earlier.  He let this simmer until the peas turned to mush; about an hour.  He seasoned with salt and pepper.   

At this point we decided to go out for a bit and enjoy the day.  We also wanted to run out and get more farmers sausage to add to the soup later.  Jeff said he would of normally added pork hocks to his stock for more flavour so he thought the finely chopped cooked farmers sausage would be a nice addition.  The ham bone we used was picked pretty clean; so there was no ham to add to the soup!

Home again; and ready to cook up the sausage.

He used the immersion blender to make the soup smooth and then added the finely chopped farmers sausage back to the pot.

Taste test.

Delicious! Glad there is enough for a few days!!!!!

Aubrey almost ate her entire bowl; she loved it!