all about peas

my friend glenn and i have these weekly dinners together - we are both far from home and like to share food with other people. last night was a combined effort: glenn made a great salad and my contribution consisted of soup - a fresh cookbook-inspired split pea. i'm sure it would have been absolutely delicious as it was, but i couldn't resist some modifications (a little coconut milk and some fresh green peas for brilliant colour and texture). and as soups usually are, it was even better tonight!

1 cooking onion

1-2 inches grated ginger

4-6 cloves of garlic

curry powder, cumin and chili powder (to taste)

10 cups of water (w/2 cubes of herb bullion) or vegetable stock

1 sweet potato (diced)

1 cup of yellow split peas

2-3 T thick coconut milk

1/2 cup cilantro or parsley

1/2 cup green peas (fresh or frozen)

sunflower sprouts (optional)

saute the onion, ginger and garlic in 1T of cooking oil until onions transparent; add the spices; add the potato, split peas, stock/water - bring to boil, reduce heat and simmer for about 1 hr (you may have to add some more water as the split peas thicken); add the coconut milk, green peas and half of the parsley/cilantro

let sit for about 10 minutes; garnish with 1t of coconut milk (it needs to be the thick kind), cilantro and some sunflower sprouts. enjoy!

sweet procrastination...

i've been talking about starting a blog about my culinary experiments for a very long time now... so why today? is it because monday, being the start of a new week, is a good day to embark on a new project (well, maybe blogging about food is not really a "project")? well, no, not really. what it acutally is, is a bad case of procrastination. an ailment of which i (and others, i'm sure) suffer but which particularly flares up when i have a LOT of work to do. being a grad student, i always have a LOT of work to do (or work i should be doing), but end of term happens to be a particularly busy period of time... yet somehow i'm finding myself struck by a particularly bad case of procrastination. i could be doing so many other things - going for a ride on my sweet bike, reading for pleasure or of course getting myself in gear and working on that paper that is due in a week. but no, today is the day that i choose to share my love of veggie food with my loved ones - something that i enjoy immensly, but given a great distance that separates us at the moment, am unable to do. so blogging about the many ways one could put bizzare ingredients together to create a healthy, scrumptious meal, is how i've chosen to share my love of food with those i love. well, i think it's time to have lunch... i will "throw" it together and later inform you of what i ended up with. so long!