We know beans...

I just read an entire book about beans and was inspired to cook split pea soup this weekend, since these lovely little green babies hail from here on the Palouse. For some reason in our house we refer to this by its color – “green soup” – probably because when Reed was little he was in an anti-pea phase and I thought the words split pea would put him off– and it is generally a favorite, probably due to the generous amount of bacon in which I saute’ the diced onion and carrots before adding the water and the dried split peas and bay leaves. The only other ingredients are salt and pepper, although I have been known to make this with chicken stock in the past. This time I didn’t yet have chicken stock so used plain water, without using a bouillon cube or anything, and surprisingly I found I liked the lighter, less salty flavor of it; it was cleaner and fresher on my tongue. So I might stick with water for green soup in the future.

The other legumes we grow here are chickpeas/garbanzos and lentils. This next weekend our church (Community Congregational United Church of Christ) in Pullman is doing a Habitat for Humanity fundraiser. I’m planning the food and using chickpeas as my starting point I’ve planned a Mediterranean-style menu: pitas, hummus, couscous, tabbouleh, vegetable and lamb stew, cucumber salad, etc. Lots of tomatoes, eggplant, onions, olive oil, and lemon juice. Of course, lemons and olives don’t grow here, but being strictly local is not the point of this fundraiser – thinking about the rest of humanity is the point, and I think olive oil is a great place to start doing that.