Let’s be honest: it’s hard to make pea soup look pretty; fortunately, its flavor makes up for any aesthetic shortcomings. Sweet peas, tender carrots–and if you wish to include smoky, salty ham–make for a hearty meal: just in time for sweater weather. Paired with a fresh biscuit or cornbread, you might just feel as though you have been transported to a ski lodge cafe, as you warm your belly and watch the snow fall.
Campbell’s Chunky Split Pea with Ham soup takes me back to my childhood; after all, Chunky is “soup that eats like a meal”, right? Soup was often a meal for my family; we enjoyed cozying up to a big bowl when winter began to creep in–perfect for a snowy day. Although I have to enjoy my soup sans snow these days, I still love the visions that come flooding back. Food memories are powerful things: they can range from spectacularly good to fantastically awful: you may wax poetically about a particular food for decades or be tainted forever by a bad experience. Food shapes who we become, as do the memories that accompany them.