Crock Pot Recipes: Easy Yellow Pea Soup

Recipe Highlights:

1. An easy pea soup made in the crock pot
2. Vegetarian, gluten free, and a good source of fiber & protein
3. 2 Weight Watchers Points Plus per servings

You probably haven't tried the yellow pea soup at Ikea because, like any normal Swedish-furniture-buying person, you go to their restaurant for the meatballs. Emotions aside, I gave up the meatballs to facilitate my weight loss. Happily, that choice created the opportunity to try the yellow pea soup.

Their yellow pea soup comes in an extremely practical bowl with two necessary rye crackers. The crackers are mandatory because this soup has no variation in texture so it must be served with a side of something that requires chewing. The soup is stick-to-your-spoon thick, and would make the most glorious splat on a wall during a food fight. The cheerful color appeals to my weekly goal to eat the full rainbow. It is not every week I get to check "pea soup yellow" off my list.

The problem with Ikea's yellow pea soup (other than being too salty) is the cost.

One Friday evening Mike asks what we are going to do for the weekend. I say, "I was just thinking about the pea soup at Ikea, let's go have lunch." "Sure," he replies, "do we need anything for around the house while we are there?" "No," I say, "let's just walk around and then get lunch."

So it's agreed. Until the next morning when we both say, "I thought of a few things we could pick up as long as we are going to drive all the way down." For reference it takes us about 45 minutes to drive to the store and don't even get me started on the pain of driving THROUGH Seattle!

We grab our short list (things like hangers or a waste basket - why do we always need another waste basket??), pack up the kiddos and head south. By the time we conquer the traffic and find a parking spot we both need a cup of coffee. So we start there with two $2 coffees, no big deal. We stroll around with a cart, because everyone else has a cart - just in case. By the time we make it to the restaurant we will have accumulated a couple throw pillows, some new kid dishes, and a desk chair - the current one is just... well, it just isn't working.

Accumulating lunch for the family is a bit of a circus so by the time we get our trays to the cashier there is soup, salads, rolls, crackers, baby applesauce, a kid's plate of mac & cheese, an extra side of vegetables, and a cookie (Hey! who grabbed that cookie?). Twenty five dollars and two trips to the soda fountain later our tummies are full. We have achieved our mission to eat lunch at Ikea. We return to our cart with a feeling of a job well done. Looking at the cart, the desk chair now seems a bit silly, so do the pillows. We casually ditch them in a corner, but keep the kid dishes.

Back in the maze, we stroll along with full tummies and an empty cart. Five steps later I see a display of Swedish Fish and drop a pack into the cart - we came all this way, so we might as well get some. Then we get to the kitchen section...

There are new place mats! There are new table settings! There is new glassware! And! I probably need a few dish towels! Mike generally raises an eyebrow at this point and scoots the cart along quickly, while I move Super-Market-Sweep-style between the displays in a frenzied attempt to gather everything that catches my eye. I try to get him excited about all the great deals I managed to scoop up, but he really couldn't care less.

Next is the linens where we agree that our comforter cover has gotten a bit shabby. After that I think it would be prudent to pick up a few more picture frames. By the time we make it out of the Market Place, and into the Warehouse, Mike will have decided that we definitely need more bookcases. While he hunts down the correct flat cardboard box, I riffle through the cart and pull out a few things that were really just impulse grabs, and not strictly necessary on second thought.

We make our way to the register to pay for our few items (by the way, when did the cart get so heavy?) watching wide-eyed as the cashier pulls item after item out of the cart. "Your total comes to one hundred forty nine dollars." What! We just came for lunch and a few little things! Ugh.

On the way home I'll think over the purchases and suddenly realize - we forgot the damn wastebasket! Aha! That is why we always need another one.

In my experience a light lunch of yellow pea soup at Ikea averages about $200.

The good news is, you can make the soup at home for under $5 and in less time than it takes to pack the kids into the car. The recipe is short and sweet. Leave the peas simmering all day in the crock pot and you don't even need to leave home to dig into a luscious soup, perfect for filling hungry tummies or flinging in an epic food fight.

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