No bones about it, this Split Pea & Potato Soup is deliciously wonderful without the classic ham bone, making it a comfort food green light for the health conscious eater. It's a vegan's dream, with only vegetable ingredients, so full of character and flavor, and yet free of pork and preservatives that come with ham or other processed meats.

Typical split pea soup is a thick and salty ham filled bowl of bloating sodium, nitrates and other additives that leach out of that processed meat as it simmers on the stove. Here, I offer my recipe for a much lighter soup by adding a little more water ( yes, water, because you don't really need a box of chicken broth to make good soup!) 

It's mid March, so put on your green clover glasses as you read this old Irish recipe for longevity: "Leave the table hungry. Leave the bed sleepy. Leave the bar thirsty." (I guess what that means is that restraint and self control are really good things!) And how about this ditty, "May your heart be light and happy, may your smile be big and wide, and may your pockets always have a coin or two inside!"  And finally, "May you have the hindsight to know where you've been, the foresight to know where you are 

Anyone out there looking for complicated tedious recipes? Anyone? I didn't think so!!! With fast food, drive through window service, and convenience foods flying off the shelf, what was my butternut loving brain thinking when I posted the recipe for that gorgeous Spinach Butternut Risotto Cake a year ago? 

It's a thing to behold, a savory and colorfully stratified "cake"