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!) 

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" 

It's a cold and rainy early spring day. Well, truth be told, it's actually coming down in buckets, with lightening and fury, temps are at a raw 42 degrees and I'm freezing! Winter's filibuster continues well into April and I feel like a hot bowl of soup is in order. When I need a fast pot of soul warming goodness, the soup I've been making since the kids were knee high is based on a good neighbor's recipe so long ago.

No doubt, I have made this soup hundreds of times, to the delight of my family...yes, it's one of their all time fav's! And it's one of those recipes that becomes a template for a thousand variations,  easily adjusting to improvisation, which is so important when you realize you're missing an ingredient! The original recipe was