Soup, Soup, Beautiful Soup!

Being on a liquid diet for six months has been a test of my patience, as has much of my life over the past three decades. I'm halfway through now and I cannot turn back so the only way out is to churn forward toward the distant shores of paradise, a plate of real food.

However, I can make and eat soup. Pureed soup only, which limits things rather sadly. Here is one that I really liked, though, and you could even do a cold version with mint like we had at the restaurant Fish in Paris at our home base in St. Germain.

Split Pea Soup

1 cup dried split peas

4 cups boiling water or broth

1 yellow onion, peeled and chopped

1 large garlic clove, minced

1 stalk celery

1 T. dried thyme leaf

1 bay leaf

1 handful fresh Italian parsley, chopped

1/2 lb cooked or dried ham, chopped

Freshly ground pepper, sea salt

Ground parsley for garnish, reserved

Heavy Cream, for garnish, reserved

Put the peas into boiling water or broth, turn the heat off, and let rest for one hour. Add the remaining ingredients and simmer until peas are soft, about two hours. At this point I pureed the soup and served it in bowls garnished with a sprinkling of parsley and a nice little ribbon of cream floating on top.