by Jackie Money

Created on: September 06, 2008   Last Updated: June 07, 2011

Being an English country girl, most of my meals are made from fresh produce - either grown locally or from my own garden, but as I also work from home as a digital typist and sometimes have deadlines to meet, there are times when I need to draw on items from my store cupboard or freezer. However, with ever increasing food prices at the moment, it's becoming too expensive to buy 'ready meals' and I've been looking at alternatives.

I've now discovered packet organic dried split peas at my local supermarket. They cost under £1 (about $2) for a packet and, although it doesn't look as if you're getting much for your money, they're extremely good value.

The peas that I bought require an initial cooking for 30 minutes and then need to be drained.

For this recipe I used about a cupful of peas which I found was enough for one soup meal for my partner and I.

After the first cooking of the peas, I added:

1 x chicken stock cube dissolved in about 1/2 pt of boiling water
1 x 1/2 finely chopped onion
Some cooked potato (which I had left over in the fridge), chopped into cubes
Herbs (I used dried chopped parsley)
Seasoning (I used salt and a pinch of chilli powder)

Just bring the mix back to the boil and simmer for 30 minutes, stirring from time to time, and then serve with bread.

You can obviously add whatever herbs, spices or seasoning you enjoy most and the same goes for additional ingredients to make the soup go further.

Due to the current recession, in order to save costs on my gas and electricity I already cook up more 'basics' than I need for one meal and keep any left over meat, fish, veg, rice, pasta and anything else I can store in the fridge so I can just reheat them later. For instance, my partner decided he'd like to improve on my 'trial run' of the above recipe and added some cooked smoked bacon but equally, you could add chicken, sausage, other vegetables and possibly smoked fish or left-over shellfish.

The potatoes which I added to my mix helped to thicken the soup but cooked rice would also do the same job as would a couple of teaspoons of cornflour/cornstarch to which three or four teaspoons of cold water had been mixed to form a paste. This cornflour mix needs to be stirred in as it's added as it may 'lump' when it hits the boiling soup.

The meal was cheap, warming, filling and healthy no added colour, flavouring or sugar. The meal can obviously be cooked in one pan on the hob so you'll be spending next to nothing on fuel and nor will you have to waste time washing up loads of pots and pans! If you have elderly relatives or kids who are at college and are on a tight budget, then this is the perfect meal for them to keep the cold at bay.

I've no doubt that there are cheaper dried split peas on the market - I just prefer to buy organic if I can and as these were so cheap and they spread such a long way, I didn't see the point in skimping on quality.

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