Pea Soup

A hedge fund manager made headlines the other day for paying 285 million—or was in 385?—for a half-finished apartment in Manhattan. But on a gray, slightly snowy day in January, it's hard to beat sitting in an overstuffed chair in front of the fire with a mug of split-pea soup in one hand and a copy of Montaigne's Essays  in the other.

The snow is so light, you can shovel it with one arm, which is what I did. And birds seem to be arriving at the feeder from all over the neighborhood: pileated, red-breasted, and downy woodpeckers, five or six cardinals at a time, shifting places or waiting their turn on the naked branches of the Amur maple trees near the fence. There's a frenzy in the air, and it's exciting to witness it.

I made the pea soup yesterday, and it taught me two lessons. The first is that green pea soup can be as good as yellow pea soup. I'd been hung up on the French-Canadian yellow pea variety, but they didn't have yellow peas at the grocery store. In boiling up the green split peas, I noticed for the first time that they actually smell like fresh green peas. It's a nice, summer-time smell.

(Minnesota is the nation's largest producer of peas. Farmers here plant 90 thousand acres a year, and the revenue they generate from this activity averages $38 million per year. This means that if all the pea farmers in Minnesota pooled their proceeds for ten years, they, too, could buy a penthouse in Manhattan, perhaps setting up a time-share?)

The second thing I learned is that it's a good idea to overload your pea soup with sautéed onions, celery, and carrots. Don't hold back. (What else are you going to do with that celery, anyway?) Summer savory is the preferred herb, but go easy on the salt, because that big chunk of salt pork is going to have a profound effect on the flavor.

At a certain point in the afternoon, it's a good idea to go out and get some air. Hilary and I drove down to the Lake Harriet Kite Festival, and we even brought along a kite I'd gotten recently as a birthday gift. In the end, we left the kite in the car, but enjoyed being out on the ice with several hundred other winter enthusiasts.

The kites were not overwhelming--little dots of color here and there. There wasn't enough wind, and it was difficult to run across the frozen lake, which was covered with a thin veneer of loose snow, at any great speed without taking a fall. But a few had gotten airborne. 

The ghost of Art Shanties Future

There was also an ice fishing contest for kids, food trucks, and a canvas tent dispensing free coffee to anyone who would make a contribution to the Art Shanty Villages, which lost out on their grant this year and will not be in operation.

Just being out on the open expanse of a frozen lake, with people passing this way and that, like a scene from Dr. Zhivago, is a thrill. At one booth they were renting fat-tire bikes, and we could see little squadrons pedaling off across the ice.  

All the way there and back on Wirth Parkway, we listened to a mysterious CD recorded in a Norwegian church by the Karl Ivar Refseth Trio called Praying. (We're talking here about a vibraphone, a double bass, and an alto saxophone, or occasionally a duduk--an ancient double reed woodwind instrument from Armenia made of apricot wood.)

Back home, I faced a challenge that no hedge fund manager will ever face. The fire had gone out while we were gone, but it was still smoldering. There were some golden pieces of split cedar kindling sitting in the wicker basket by the hearth. I'd split them myself from the butt end of a long cedar beam I'd been cherishing in the garage for years. If I'd tossed one in, it would have burst into flame and revived the fire. But I'm reluctant to use them because they're so precious and so beautiful. They smell heavenly, they burn perfectly, they crackle like nobody's business. Supplies are limited...

I think you can see the delicate position I was in.