Yellow Split Pea soup (and tomato drama)

When I eat out almost all the time, my body rebels. Nothing works right and my skin gets icky, my body is tired, and forget about being regular. Augh- grease, sugar, salt overload!
So when I got back from New Orleans, where I ate too much delicious Cajun food, I was dying for something not deep fried, full of meat, or chocked full of sodium. I bought a bag of yellow split peas, made yummy soup, and felt better right away (and ate it for lunch the next day, and breakfast the following day). Yep, blokey and I went through a whole bag of yellow split peas in about 2 meals.

Yellow vegetarian split pea soup
Ingredients:
One bag of yellow split peas
2 onions
2-3 carrots, peeled and chopped
3-4 medium potatoes, peeled and diced
3 bay leafs
1 c. of tomatoes (can be boxed or canned)
salt and pepper to taste
butter or olive oil
water or stock
oregano, basil, whatever herbs you have on hand (parlsey would have been nice too)

Method:
Pick over the split peas. Soak for 8 hours or do what I do, which is to put it in a pot with water, set it to boil with the bay leaves inside, and let it sit an hour.
Next, saute first the onions and fat together in a larger soup pot over medium heat. After 3-4 minutes (softer, smelling yummy), add the carrots. Let that cook and stir for about 3-5 more minutes. Add the potatoes, let that cook for a few more minutes.



Strain the peas and add to the pot with the carrots and potato mixture. Add water or broth until it covers over the stuff inside. Increase the heat to high until it all boils, then simmer and cover for about 20 minutes, until every thing is soft. Feel free to add more bay leaves (I love me some BL).


After the 20 minutes, add some tomatoes. Blokey and I are using Tetra Pak boxed tomatoes now. Evidently, canned tomatoes, because they are acidic, leach ickiness from the can into the tomato. The resin lining of cans "contain bisphenol-A, a synthetic estrogen that has been linked to ailments ranging from reproductive problems to heart disease, diabetes, and obesity." Uh, ick? If I am going to get those problems, I want it to be because I ate a lot of deliciousness. Since we eat a lot of tomatoes, we've decided to make the haul up to Fairway more to get these. They can also be bought at Trade Joes or Whole Foods, I believe (just not the TJs in NYC that I visit). This is also a good reason to consider soaking beans and forgoing canned soup (does anyone eat that anymore?)

These Pomi tomatoes are not joking around. Nothing in there but tomatoes.

I don't know why I didn't take an after photo. The soup looked like this, but more orange and uniform in color

We ate the soup with roasted Brussels sprouts and potatoes. Our CSA dumped another 20 lbs of potatoes and carrots on us. I need to focus on consuming those soon.