Curried Split Pea & Cauliflower Soup

This is another new-to-me soup, this one from Susan V's Fat Free Vegan Blog - Curried Split Pea & Cauliflower Soup. The recipe is at her blog.





This was the first time I used my pressure cooker in probably 3 years. In fact, last year when I went to use it I noticed the ring was tacky so had to order a new one from Amazon. Although the ring came within a week or so, I never put it on the pot but had it hanging around the house all this time. A few weeks ago I was going to make a different pressure cooker recipe and when I grabbed the lid realized I never put the ring in, but when I went to get it from where I thought I put it when cleaning for Christmas, it was gone. Those gremlins like to hide things in the house and sometimes it takes weeks before they reappear. I recruited both my guys to help look for it, but when none of us could find it I just ordered another one. They're supposed to be changed about every 18 months, anyway, according to the package, so when it turns up I'll use it for the next scheduled change.

So, the soup smells wonderful and has a nice spicy kick to it. I used less than one tablespoon of the curry because we don't like things *too* spicy around here. Yeah, I'm a spice wuss. So what? LOL  See how creamy that soup is? That's how great the peas fell apart after pressure cooking. Usually I use the immersion blender for pea soups but this one doesn't need it at all, and it's fun to see those tiny bits of carrots. Next time I'm already planning on defrosting the cauliflower first and chopping it up into smaller pieces. We don't like big chunks of stuff in our soups if we can help it. I had nice fat carrots so sliced them into quarters before chopping to keep the size down.

Susan, if you're reading messages here, thanks for a wonderful soup and thanks for getting me to use my pressure cooker again. I stopped using it when it got stored in an out-of-the-way area in this cluttered apartment. Now that things are arranged differently and I can easily get to more of my kitchen stuff, like the food processor and this pressure cooker, I plan on using it much more often. Heck, I may soon unpack the "new" Crockpot I bought almost a year ago and finally break that in, too! LOL