After our walk this morning, which included going up to Mum’s grave and watering the spring flowers we had planted earlier (Mum would be pleased), I thought I might make another big batch of soup upon our return. Delighted with the delicious spicy butternut pumpkin soup of yesterday, and wishing to show the British Bulldog spirit of wartime and lockdown, I thought I’d use those old split peas lurking at the top of a kitchen cupboard and a few of the funny-looking dried green bean things (from my vegetarian days several years ago) to make a pea and ham soup. Actually, I didn’t have any ham – just some already opened smoked streaky bacon that had to be used up before the 26th March. I’m off bacon. It’s so tough nowadays, isn’t it? The plan was to pop the unappetising bacon into the pressure cooker with the soaked split peas and green things, along with onions and potatoes, then pull out the bacon after pressurizing.

A soak overnight had made little impression on the medley of dried peas and beans; they were still rather hard, small and vividly ochre and lincoln green. Nevertheless, they went into the pressure cooker with the potatoes and onions. I thought Mum would have been proud of me making the most of the things from yesteryear that had been forgotten behind the dried raisins and odd coloured pasta. “Waste not, want not,” I could hear my mother’s words.

Wouldn’t you think that an hour in a pressure cooker would be ample to soften soaked peas and beans? And the bacon was still hard and grainy. Wouldn’t you think that a further 40 minutes at full temperature would do the trick? No, you’ve guessed it, the water level had boiled down to a dangerous level and the hard yellow peas were now brown and stuck to the bottom of the pressure cooker.

In true British Bulldog spirit (even though I’m Australian) I saved the day, or soup of the day, with a strainer. The remaining inch of soup liquor was really quite savoury and made an excellent stock for the two asparagus CupaSoups, which I added along with some boiling water.

“It’s lovely soup!” Chris enthused as he took his first mouthful.

Neither Chris nor I could manage to finish our “Lockdown Soup”, as I call it, but, being stoical, we’ve decided to put the leftovers in the fridge for tomorrow’s lunch. We can hardly wait!