On Sunday morning the temperature when I got up at 5:30AM was -3F but the sun was coming up when I pulled up the shades at 7AM.
It was a brilliant, beautiful, bitter cold morning. The wind had arrived and that made it much worse outside.
I was surprised to not see flocks of birds on the feeders when I pulled the shades up.
I got my post up and my brother got up and helped me clean up the kitchen. Then I made some breakfast.
When I went to sit down to breakfast, I glanced out the dining room window and saw this red tailed hawk sitting on the signature oak tree.
My brother had just headed out the back door, letting it slam behind him, and walked over to dump something over the bank. I thought for sure the hawk would take off, but it sat there totally unfazed.
So I glanced over to see if all the birds had disappeared and they hadn’t! There was a male cardinal, sparrows, and juncos on the ground with the mourning doves. The goldfinches were on the feeders. No one seemed at all alarmed.
After a rest after breakfast, I got started ironing the linens.
I made it through about half of them and had to go sit down to rest a while.
On Saturday night my brother and I set the dried peas to soak. I had added water in the morning. We planned to follow Hayden Pearson’s recipe as neither of us had made pea soup in decades.
About 1PM I went out and got the vegs cut up. The recipe called for 1 carrot and 1 medium potato. Well, I like a lot of vegs in soups so I cut up a lot of carrots. We use batata in place of potato and I went to get the one out of the pantry. I’d forgotten we’d used it in the Roasted Corn chowder. So I messaged my brother to bring a batata home with him. I’d chopped a lot of onions too.
My brother wanted to use the crockpot like he does for baked beans. So I boiled the peas per instructions, but it was obvious all the water called for was not going to fit in the crockpot. Then I remembered I’d planned to use chicken bone stock.
So I put all the vegs in first, then scooped out all the peas, put in the quart of bone stock and a little bit of the water from boiling. It was right to the top. Then I remembered I’d forgotten the seasonings. Well, you can see where some of those ended up. I set it on high and went to finish the linens.
Halfway through I remembered I’d forgotten to wash the tree skirt. So I put that in, completely forgetting to put the red linen piece in with it. Now I’ll have to wash it and iron it on Monday. Sigh… I’d hoped to finish on Sunday.
My brother came home with the batata at 4:30PM and said he wanted more carrots in the soup. So I got the batata and the carrots in, but only after transferring the mess to a larger stockpot. He was stirring it and said, where’s the ham? We’d both completely forgotten the ham, the main reason we were making this soup. Haydn Pearson’s recipe doesn’t call for ham, so of course I forgot about it.
So he went down and got a package of cubed ham out of the freezer, got it thawed out, cut down to size, and in the pot. We let it cook until about 5:45PM when the peas started to go to mush and cook to the bottom.
In the meantime I was making cornbread as I was told one HAD to have cornbread with split pea soup. Plus lashings of butter. I believe the actual word used was slathering.
The cornbread was only cooked on the back side though the whole thing had browned. The fan is going on the convection oven and I forgot to turn the pan half way through. But it still tasted good and the soup was pretty wonderful, even with all the glitches.
As usual, I forgot to get photos when things were done, but there was a piece of cornbread left, so I took this of it.
I was in bed early as I was very tired. I’d spent from 4PM on trying to get the stoves going well as it was to be the coldest night yet.
On Monday I have to shower, do laundry, clean up the kitchen and there’s a phone appointment mid afternoon. It’s to be sunny in the morning then clouding up and getting warmer during the afternoon and night. We might get snow. So I’ll be tending stoves all afternoon.