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 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

As winter's chill settles into your bones, it's time to simmer up a soul soothing, slurpy bowl of love, using what else but bones. Soup is the most basic of foods, feeding body and soul with it's life giving elements bathing in slow simmered nourishment.

​Growing up, soup was as basic as bread at our table. And it was the broth that played the starring role; vegetables and meat were an occasional and unnecessary accompaniment.