Free Range Friday ~ Yellow Split Pea Soup Not Quite

Even though I know better, by experience, mind you, I made a big mistake yesterday concerning food here. Just the other day I'd been talking with a friend about ham hocks. The lowly ham hock, which can be elevated to a form of soup ingredient the same way caviar goes with blintzes. The one ingredient almost impossible to get here. I got them once at a ridiculous cost but as we often do here when confronted with a one time rarity, I bought them. They were here. That was a looooong time ago and I've not seen them since. 

I'm throwing a little Fajardo Christmas decor in here, in case this story isn't your cup of soup

Yesterday I saw them. And the bag was only 2 dollars. I was almost hopping in glee, as even though the rain has stopped, the coolness has continued and I'm still in soup mode. This time, yellow split pea soup. Truly, I like green split pea soup better, maybe best of all, but I had these yellow ones (Cheli must has been out of green) and it was time to make them go away. With ham hocks, oh dear me!

Two dollars she said, yes, really. I asked, this IS pork, right, it is for soup, right? Oh yes, I was assured; I could see that semi-glazed soup look in her eyes. That's all I saw and all I heard. Vaguely the words drifted to me...you soak it in water overnight...but I was already out the door in my head, suresure, I know this, I've got this, I am so on top of this. Dozens, nay, hundreds of hours long steaming pots and kettles of soups, wafting mouth watering aromas of onion, garlic, ham and various legumes down the years played back to me movie-like as I clutched my bag of feeling like almost stolen goods on the short walk home.   

I felt like her, without the swishy skirt, which would have made it perfect

Sure, these hocks looked a little different, more pink and white, smaller, but that was okay, different is okay. Different became the new normal when I moved to the Caribbean. I'm cool, I'm a cook. I'm...what? Opening the package reality and I met, like reaching for a fallen object (my fantasy) at the same time (these were not smoked ham hocks reality) and slamming heads. Hard. These were...what were they?  Yes, they were ham hocks, but something else too. I put my finger to the white surface and barely touched it to my tongue. These suckers were salted. I mean salted like an encrusted cod fish. Salted like licking the floor of the Salt Sea. Salted like 'you soak these overnight'.

Okay. That's okay. I could roll with that. I'd...fry them. I'd...add some 100% natural liquid smoke. I'd soak 'em another day. I'd not have soup. I'd weep a bit. Okay, I didn't really weep. But I did feel a bit bereft. I fried them.

See the salt? 

If it's possible, they were saltier. I guess the soaked in salt rose to the not really very fatty surface. So un-fatty in fact that I had to add water to keep them from burning. I finally put them in this bowl, cooled them down and put them away, out of sight. Out of temptation's reach to make the damn soup anyway. With one of them. A small one. But it was already late. Too late. Hunger had gone the way of disappointment, now I was just tired of the whole experiment. God knows nothing is going to spoil these suckers, they'll be around for another day or until long after I depart this mortal coil. They would be in that bowl, looking exactly the same. Like a Twinkie or a McDonald's hamburger, unaltered from their primal salty state. At least it would be natural. Alas.

This photo is from Earth & Sky, but is pretty close to what I was seeing. Though not perfectly dark skies, I do have a pretty dark yard, the moon had already set; it was a fine show and it is still going on if you're up reading this in this part of the world.

On the success side, the Geminid meteor showers lived up to and beyond expectation. My mental meteor alarm went off around 3 a.m. and I'd not been in the yard but a moment when the sky went meteor streaky. Averaging about 2 a minute, all over the eastern sky, long, streaming half way across the sky, barely there blinks, winks and nods, whites and blues they fell out of time into mine. And this isn't the peak, that happens around the same time tomorrow. I'll be there, but with mosquito repellent this time. 

So, no soup, but a meteor shower? Life is a trade off and sometimes the trade offs are so unbalanced in our favor we can put things in perspective right easy, no rocket science needed. That's a good thing.

Have a fortuitous Friday. Do something forgiving.