Moroccan-Style Split Pea Soup

I'm dedicating this weekend to cooking. This preliminary week back to school has been rough on the diet. I realized that I need to have a lot more food prepared so all I need to do is warm it up; otherwise, I will do very bad things, like go through drive-thru. In addition to the soup I'm describing here, I've already made hummus, kombucha, and marinara sauce. Tomorrow, I plan on making vegetable-beef soup and chicken salad. My refridgerator is overflowing. But for someone who is as obsessed by food as I am, that's a comforting feeling.

I don't know if I ever had split-pea soup growing up. I suspect that one or both of my parents disliked it. As an adult, I'm not the biggest fan of the stuff yet, but this same cook book that I used last week, 1,000 Low-calorie Recipes has a Moroccan-Style Split Pea Soup recipe, and I do like Moroccan food. I love the strange marriage of spices we'd never consider putting together, like cinnamon and cumin, and yet, they really work.

The soup itself is ok.  It's filling and different than what I usually eat.  It'll be a nice change of pace now and again, but if I ever make it again, I'll leave out the cilantro.  It's too overwhelming.  I don't know if the other spices' flavors are lost in the cooking or whether they're simply masked by the cilantro.  Although I'm not one of those people who hate  cilantro because to them cilantro tastes like soap, I'm not too far off.  I prefer just a hint of it to as opposed to being hit over the head with it.

 Again, the calorie count is different in the book than what myfitnesspal.com has come up with.  The book says 150 calories/serving.  Myfitnesspal figures 114 calories.

Moroccan-Style Split Pea Soup:
Ingredients:
1 Tble Olive Oil
1 large onion chopped
1 large carrot finely diced (I use baby carrots. I like the convenience. I think I used 5 or 6)
2 tsp rice vinegar
1.5 tsps salt
2 large garlic cloves minced
1.5 tsps gingerroot grated (by the way, scraping gingerroot with the edge of spoon really does work well for scraping. I tried it for the first time tonight)
64 ounces ouf vegetable broth Swanson makes a 32-ounce carton
1.25 cups of split, dried, green peas
.5 tsp freshly ground black pepper
.5 tsp ground cinnamon
.25 tsp ground cumin
.25 tsp ground turmeric
.25 cup chopped fresh parsley
.25 cup chopped fresh cilantro

Instructions:

1. Heat the oil over medium heat. Add onion, carrot, viengar, and .25 tsp of salt cook until onion is softened, about 8 minutes. Add garlic and ginger and cook one minute.

2. Add the broth, split peas, pepper, cinnamon, cumin, tuermeric, and remaining 1.25 tsp salt. Bring to a boil over high. Reduce to medium-low and simmer uncovered for 1.25 hours. Stir occationally.

3. Stir in half the parsley and cilantro. Add remaining Parsley and Cilantro to individual bowls.

Ok. I didn't do the whole individual garnish thing. I added it all at once. When you reheat most of the soup, there's simply no sense to garnishes.