Ham Soup

Earlier this week J, the lady who cleans the house, was here and brought me a ham bone. Friday is P’s day to work late so I asked her to make pea soup with the ham bone. When P took the ham bone out of the refrigerator, she discovered some sliced ham in addition to the ham bone. We decided not to use the ham slices in the soup, instead they will be used in an omelet for tonight’s supper.

The ham bone went into the soup pot along with the peas, carrots, onions, garlic, bay leaves, pepper, salt, chicken broth, and water and left to simmer it’s way to pea soup. After lunch P went to work, and I was left home alone with the delicious smell of soup. Later yesterday afternoon I removed the ham bone from the soup pot and fished out the chunks of ham that had fallen off the bone. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that the ham bone and all the ham chunks barely fit on a dinner plate. When I finished removing all the ham from the bone, I used two forks to shred the ham and finished up with a heaping plate of deliciously tasting ham. After I added all the ham back to the pea soup I discovered that I now had ham soup with a bit of pea soup flavoring.

Today P has some grocery shopping to do and is going to purchase another bag of dried split peas. We will cook these peas and combine with the other pot turning the ham soup back into pea soup. Which we will ladle into containers, place in the freezer and use it for lunches.

I will now admit that I made the mistake of adding salt to the soup before cooking it forgetting that you should never do that and forgetting that ham can be extremely salty. Hopefully adding the additional bag of cooked peas will cut the saltiness of the soup. If that doesn’t cut the saltiness enough, I will add a potato, which should do the trick.