Chocolate Covered Love

I know, I know... Another long gap in blog posts. 

This month has just felt rather hectic. Next month will be too.

My family is here this summer for their furlough from Cambodia. They only get to come every other summer, so everyone's trying to cram in as much time as possible with each other. However, my sister is now going to be going to school about an hour out of Chicago! Super exciting. So I'll be able to see her much more often now. 

Before my family moved to Cambodia, we would go camping every summer to Peninsula State Park in Door County, WI. Now my family goes for 2 weeks every other summer when they are back in the States. This year I got to join them for one week! It was just me and Aria this time because my husband had to work. We had a great time! I hadn't gone for 4 years, so I was really excited. It turned out to be a super muggy and hot week, but we still had fun. And Aria and I came back a couple shades darker (yay).

Fair warning, there are A LOT of photos.

^^Above is a hammock that my family takes with every time they go camping, and I learned something new about it this year. It is 37 years old! My mom bought it on a trip to Venezuela when she was younger. As my dad puts it, "Mom has known this hammock longer than she's known me!" Wow.

 

^^ Every 3-4 years these fish come close to the shores around the peninsula to breed, but due to the heat of the shallow water, many of them die. So all the beaches we visited had a lot of these little dead fish everywhere. Not too bad, but kind of smelly.

 

^^We stopped at a Farmers Market in Jacksonport on our way to The Farm. We bought some homemade strawberry fruit roll-ups, which were delicious. Unfortunately when we got back to the campsite later that day we forgot to take them out of the ice chest at night and a raccoon family ate them all. :(





^^Aria loved the goats. I thought she was going to love the kittens best, we always did when we were younger, but she loved following the goats around more. Probably because they were an animal she had never seen before and she could feed them out of her hand. Much more exciting than sleepy kittens.



 

^^Climbing up Eagle tower. We attempted to fly my dad's kite like we usually do, but there really wasn't enough wind.





^^Aria woke up at about 6am every morning we were gone camping, so I had to find something to occupy her until everyone else got up... So here we are at about 7am, beach to ourselves.

We had a great time at Peninsula State Park, and I highly recommend it. I may put up more photos later after I get the ones off my mom's camera. :)

This recipe has been consumed by many generations on my mom's side of the family. My grandmother used to make it for my mom, my mom used to make it for me and my siblings and now I've made it for my daughter. It's not the prettiest soup, but it's very filling and inexpensive. Great for a cold day.

This recipe can be made with yellow or green split peas, it's a matter of personal preference. I used the yellow ones here. My grandmother says that she usually used the yellow ones when her kids were young because they didn't like the idea of "pea soup". My grandma also called it "ham soup" for their sake, because she used a ham bone (leftover from a ham dinner) with some meat still attached to make it. I couldn't find a ham bone at our grocery store, so I omitted it and just used ham meat for the flavor and salt content.

In this recipe the split peas are practically cooked to death, and then after several hours of cooking, chopped  carrots and potatoes are added. The original recipe can be found on the back of the bag that the split peas come in. It doesn't matter the brand.

Swedish Pea Soup

- 16oz. bag split peas (green or yellow)
- one small onion, chopped
- one medium carrot, diced
- one stalk celery, chopped
- one large potato, chopped
- one ham bone or 1/4 lb chopped ham
- 3 cups chicken stock
- 3 cups water
- salt and pepper (to taste)

Sort and rinse peas. Sort to pick out any small rocks or bad peas.
In a large pot, combine peas, onion, celery, ham bone (if you have one), stock and water and bring to a boil. Reduce to a simmer, cover, and cook for at least 2 hours - or until everything has basically cooked to mush.
Add the chopped carrots, potatoes and ham and cook until the carrots and potatoes are tender.
Season with additional salt and pepper if you like.
Serve hot.