Split Pea Soup

Lunch is a hard meal as the mother of an infant. My best bet has been having leftovers, which doesn't always happen when trying out a new recipes. Enter a recent favorite of mine, Split Pea Soup. At first I followed recipes to make this dish, then I figured out which ingredients I liked at which ratios, which apparently makes it my recipe. I love this stuff!

Ingredients
1 cup diced onion
1 cup diced celery
2 large cloves of garlic (or more, I really like garlic)
1 cup dry lentils (any color will work)
1 cup dry split peas
1 cup brown rice (or barley)
6 cups water or the broth/bullion of your choosing, plus 1.5 cups water

Method

Saute your onion, garlic and celery until soft and fragrant over a medium-high heat
Add in 6 cups of water or broth, bring to a boil.
Once the water boils, add in split peas and lentils, bring water back to a boil. Once boiling, cover and turn heat down to a simmer. I leave this alone for a while, stirring very occasionally as the peas and lentils will fall to the bottom.
Once you have a nice split pea style mush, add in the rice or barley and another 1.5 cups of water. Now I leave it alone for about 40 minutes (think cooking rice). When I come back to it the rice has settled and there is a layer of liquid. This bit threw me off for a while, until I realized that if I take it off the heat and stir everything together it will incorporate into a nice consistency. I let the nice consistency sit for about 10 minutes (the amount of time it takes me to get boxed brownies in the oven, super helpful time right?).

Now this may come out a tough bland, but remember this is a go to lunch meal for me. So I like to have it made up, then season each bowl depending on my daily preferences. At least salt and pepper make it in, but this allows me to play with other herbs, spices, maybe even some cheese. Plus, it may be obvious that I am not great at measuring out what I do, but I know exactly how much salt and pepper to shake on one bowl of soup. I bet you do too!