Split Pea Soup.

Sourced from another new food blog. All pretty explanatory, but I fiddled with the meat. You're supposed to use ham hocks, but the source used Canadian bacon and bacon (wat.). I actually bought what I thought was a ham, which it was, but it was a picnic pork shoulder. That's apparently a pork shoulder with the skin still on. And I think already cooked. Pretty sure of that. Anyway, I had to boil this thing, I wish I had just used the ham broth instead of chicken broth (as source indicated), but I guess it was leaner this way. Garlic, onion, yeah.

I froze some and refrigerated the rest which congealed into a sweet green brick.

Shit's fucking awesome. Here's the thing about split pea soup. It's super easy, you can make it taste however you want, and it can be an accompaniment or a main course. I need to make more soups.

I also made some red mashed potatoes, but I mixed in some boiled cabbage which is also awesome.

Also, refried black beans are awesome.

Chicken and Dumplings.

Oops.

Well, here's finally something non-alcoholic. There should be a lot more like this since I'm not allowed to spend anymore money on booze for a couple months.

Source from Elise. Flour is such a useful, random thing. It makes everything. I'm putting the ingredients for the dumplings here because I haven't figured out a good system for knowing when to use baking soda and when to use baking powder. All I know at the moment is that baking soda goes with chocolate and buttermilk.

• 2 cups cake flour (can sub all-purpose flour)


• 2 teaspoons baking powder


• 3/4 teaspoon salt


• 2 Tbsp butter, melted


• 3/4 cup milk


• 1/4 cup minced fresh herb leaves such as parsley, chives, and tarragon (optional)

Everything is pretty simple and obvious save for making a roux to start the stew base which is foreign to me since I don't make gravy.

The dumplings turned out a little dense but fixable next time. Also, I didn't add salt when making the stock, which I should have done because the chicken ended up a bit bland. In general, I should just start using a little more salt. Chicken and dumplings are also apparently freezable, so we'll see how that turns out.