After the Holidays Cooking

You wanna be polite - no, you reassure your image in the mirror, you don't look too much like a cookie monster gone pudgy. So every meal has been prefaced and chased by a cookie or four, so what if sugar is now your main food group, you still can (barely) squeeze into the winter jeans, even if those are your "comfort" sized ones.

Green Split Pea Soup - no time like the present to start edging your way back towards the colorful food groups - and I mean the ones without the sugar crystal decorations!
2 TBS olive oil
2 onions chopped
2 carrots chopped
2 celery stalks chopped
2 lbs ham hocks (2 should be enough)
diced ham (if you want more meat than what the ham hocks will impart)
4 bay leaves
12 cups of water
1 lb. Split Peas
1 tsp. thyme
In Large soup pot, heat olive oil over high heat - saute onions,carrots,celery until veggies begin to brown. (I also added a potato to this). Add ham hocks,bay leaves and water. Bring to boil and then simmer for 2-2 1/2 hours. Take out ham hocks, shred meat and discard bone and fat, add meat back to pot along with split peas that you have rinsed and thyme. Simmer uncovered for about 1 1/2 hours or until peas dissolve and thicken soup. (Soup may be refrigerated for several days or frozen). In my case, this will feed me,Mom and a few friends that would not be able to understand this recipe nor identify half of the ingredients if they saw them in their frig. For them, this will be the first real food they have had since relatives took pity and invited them home for real food at the holidays.
Recipe developed by cookbook author Marlene Sorosky Gray.