It just kills me when folks send me whiny emails or moan in everday conversations that it is so costly to eat well now and that I always feature such expensive dishes or meals. Get a grip! If you are eating out more than once or twice a week, you are 
probably spending more on your food than I am, and I am probably eating far better… So here is just one example of eating a healthy, delicious, nutritious and economical dish from ingredients that are totally available in the local environment. If you just put a smidgen of thought into your meals (even just 10% of the thought that you put into your work which gives you money to pay for your meals that keep you going so you can work some more…), maybe you would eat better at home, eat out less, and probably even save more money…
Take a soup pot and put it on the fire. Throw in some ham bones (buy at groceries with ham counters, say PHP55 for the bones of one ham), and cover with water. 
Peel and slice one onion, a carrot or two and a nice celery rib or two and chop them up and add to the ham bones. Boil this for about 1.5 hours. No need to visit it too often. Drop in one 400 gram package of yellow split peas (photo here) for PHP29.75 from the grocery and let that simmer for say 30-40 minutes until it is all soft and cooked. Season with salt and pepper (I use white pepper). Remove the ham bones, blitz in batches in a blender or all together with a hand-held blender and adjust thickness with some hot water or chicken broth. Makes roughly 8 nice servings. This freezes very well. When you heat it up, just add water if it is too thick. Add a slice or two worth of shredded ham if you want to get fancy. Cost per serving? About PHP13-14 or LESS than the cost of an order of small french fries at Jollibee. And if you live alone, this amount of work equals several meals… serve it with a salad and it makes an excellent light and healthy lunch or dinner. Yup, get cooking folks. It is cheaper, healthier and more delicious than falling hook, line and sinker for the fast-track, fast-food, fast-life that all those skinny models in the ads are pushing…
19 Responses
True, we eat out less often nowadays. A lot of restaurants now scrimp on ingredients. Home-made food is definitely far healthy. I wonder what a P550.00 dinner for the eyeball tomorrow will include. Looking forward to the desserts.
i would wish to have a thicker soup and some crusty bread to scoop it with.
daw kanamit gid!
I really agree with you! Homemade food does not only taste better (mostly…) it is also more economical. And as you are in control of the ingredients you can make it as healthy (or in my case, unhealthy) as you want! Thanks for all the tips and discoveries! :) See ya tomorrow!
Nothing beats Mommy’s home cooked ‘healthy’ meals! Yellow split peas is sumthin new to me, I should give it a try. Thanks for sharing. :)
Hmm, so whiny email do really goes around several Filipino bloggers sites. tsk tsk
I believe MM is just enjoying now the fruits of his labor, he’s entitled to it. Everything is costly nowadays, and as a regular visitor in this site for 2 years I haven’t seen a bunch of food places MM had visited. Rather he featured his “experimentations” coming from his kitchen.
Btw, I am guilty for eating out not just twice a week, but 5 times a week! And yes it does hurt my pocket bigtime. And tomorrow’s dinner for only PhP 550, is cheap.
hello MM, im one of your “lurkers” but decided to “unlurk” hehehe… just wanted to say thanks for posting this recipe. i will try it out soon. i hope that you guys will have fun at the EB! thanks again!
It’s fascinating that you featured this dish, which is a sort of national homely dish in Sweden, eaten every Thursday. This everyday dish is common not only in Scandinavia but also in other European countries. Here’s a link on the history of the Pea Soup that could be of interest.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pea_soup
Btw, I didn’t know that Yellow Split Peas are available in Manila. Then I don’t have to bring boxes of Swedish Yellow Split Peas to Manila for Swedish friends who get homesick and long for this dish.
Good luck and lots of fun in tomorrow’s Eyeball! Wish I was there!
What a coincidence! I cooked some split pea soup for the first time two nights ago and my kids loved it! Found some at SM grocery and was surprised at the low price. I also added a small piece of jamon serrano bone and it came out really good. So tasty and healthy. It is so true that you can eat much better, and cheaper, if you cook at home, as we entertain alot at home too. See you on Saturday!
Even here in the U.S. , we rarely go out to eat now because food prepared at home is a lot better and cheaper.
when he was still healthy and alive, my dad used to make this sometimes (but using green instead of yellow peas), and I abolutely LOVED it! Especially with croutons…oooh! I sometimes get the craving for it and make a huge batch all for myself (it’s not really hubby’s thing…)
I have a variation of this recipe on file that I am very happy to cook on occasion. The variation on this recipe is to pass about half or 3/4 of the split pea into a processor, and sprinkle crunchy bacon on top. That would solve the request for thicker soup I’ve read in the comments.
Marianne, that does sound good. Actually, the soup as made in the recipe is in fact rather thick. It doesn’t look it in the photo but this can be almost as thick as glue…it’s dependent on the amount of broth you use relative to the split peas. I like the bacon idea of yours…I sometimes also put pancetta which is an Italian bacon…
My fiance and I are tying the knot soon and we’re both pretty excited about having our own place and learning how to cook. I’ve been telling him about your wonderful website and how some of the dishes are easy enough for novices like ourselves. When asked about your identity, I said that you go to great lengths to protect your privacy and that you’re only known as “Marketman” to which he replied, “He’s a superhero!”
Marketman the superhero! Helping the poor and the clueless prepare healthier meals! Paving the way to a better quality of life! =)
Eating out used to be a regular and “looked forward” kind of thing for my family. But now it has become a chore because honestly how many really nice restos are there that give you value for money. I do not go for fast foods either. I have always personally prepared the meals for my family and I do get burned out planning the menu. Sometimes I am so lazy trying out new ones but your blog has given me a new twist to some classics and new ones that are simple for me to try. If some of your featured food recipes seem to classy or up there I don’t mind reading about them even to just vicariously taste them.
i have a package of lentils that look like the picture above. my sister brought them from india and they are labeled “toor dal”. would you know if they are the same?
skymermaid, they may look the same, but they aren’t. One is a lentil and another a pea or a split pea. The yellow dal you have is made into a damp thick stew that is eaten with bread, etc. It is often seen at Indian meals and delicious…but I have never cooked it myself.
Hello guys
Ever since retiring from the corporate world and working for the family biz (at home), I think i have cooked more times than the last 10 years. With the time and facilities available, there just aint no reason not to cook. Other than being healthy, affordable, cooking also gives you a sense of fulfillment making all those dishes available in restos and commercial places. Also you know 100% what goes into your body. No more mystery ingredients:)
Happy Cooking
regards
Philip
Tried this recipe the other day with great success! Did not have ham bones so I threw in a few slices of Canadian bacon diced up, and diced up piece of chorizo bilbao instead. After that boiled, I took out the fat pieces left from the bacon, added chicken stock, and the bag of split peas. Following the recipe exactly, put in the immersion blender after 45 minutes (thereby chopping up the bacon and sausage into tiny bits, where it now served as a pretty confetti in red to the yellow soup!) Truly, I only went back to the pot twice, to put the stock and peas, and to blend after I turned off the fire. Best of all, my kids loved it!!! We will be well stocked with this now that it’s turned cold here.
Where can you buy the yellow peas in Manila? I’ve looked everywhere with no success.