[magslinger]

Thank you. I took the opportunity to copy, paste and email it to my daughters. Conserving family recipes is important to me. My great grandmother was literate in Finnish but never “got” the concept of recipes. Never used them nor wrote them. She made yellow pea soup a lot during the winter, but neither my mother nor her sisters paid attention to how she did it. Until mom found a similar recipe in a magazine she hadn’t had it for some 50 years.

[magslinger]

That reminds of another variation on my vegetable soup recipe. Substitute 8-10 whole allspice berries for the japone peppers. That was the secret ingredient in great grandmother's soup. Mom didn't know that the "black peas" were actually allspice berries.

Allspice matches very well with beef as well as peas. I keep a pepper mill stocked with the whole berries and use it in meat loaves and in rubs intended for beef.

Don't bite down on the black peas, they bite back.