Pea soup has been eaten since antiquity; Greek street vendors in 500 BC sold hot pea soup in Athens. A soup made with yellow split-peas is often called a “London” after the thick yellow smogs London used to be famous for. (Thick as pea soup). We honor the legendary Sacred Band of Thebes. Read about this unprecedented gay fighting force of ancient Thebes from 379BC!
Here is an interesting twist on the classic pea soup using yellow peas and a touch of beef! Try it for something new for your table.
Ingredients:
- 2 ½ cups yellow split peas (1lbs)
- 1 pound beef stew meat, cut into 1/2-inch chunks
- 1 cup shredded carrots
- ½ onion, diced
- 1 can diced potatoes
- 1 tsp thyme
- 1 tsp each: salt, pepper
- 6 cups total liquids: (3 cups water and 3 cups beef broth)
Directions:
Do any cutting first. Chop up the onion. Drain the can of potatoes and measure out the carrots.
If you can not find yellow split peas in your local megamart, you can use green ones but it just wont taste the same.
Pick through the yellow peas to remove anything that does not look nice.
(any foreign material or damaged peas) Easy way is to pour a little bit into a wide bowl and pick with damp fingers. When first bowl full is done add it to the pot and pour some more out.
In a dutch oven on the stove top add dried peas and 2 quarts water.
Bing to a boil for 2 minutes, skim off any foam. Then let it stand off the heat for 1 hour!
This re-hydrates the peas and they will swell. After that strain in a colander and again remove anything you don't like the looks of.
Wipe out the dutch oven and heat 1 Tbs of oil
Saute the onions and carrots until the onions turn translucent, 10 to 15 minutes. Remove to bowl.
Next brown the stew meat in the dutch oven. ( about 7 minutes)
Dish out about a third or so of the peas into a smaller bowl and set aside.
Pour in the large bowl of peas and the liquids, and heat to boiling.
Stir in onion-carrot mix along with the drained can of dice potatoes.
Reduce heat to low, cover, and simmer 55 to 60 minutes, or until vegetables are tender.
Stir frequently to keep the solids from burning on the bottom. Taste for salt and pepper.
Temporalary remove from heat and carefully blend everything with an imersion blender until smooth.
Return to heat, add the remaining peas and stew meat. Season with salt & pepper. Heat to boiling; reduce heat. Cover and go back to simmering and stiring for another 40 minutes.
If you wish, serve with a brown & serve bread and some parmesan cheese on top for garnish.
What a fantastic dish to serve to your Master! Believe me, He never got a taste like this from a can of condensed soup! It is as homemade as possible, and YOU did it.
For our music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GztV3yWNJJw
So honored to prepare this for my Master Indy.
socialslave
To satisfy and restore.
To nourish, support and maintain.
To gratify, spoil, comfort and please,
to nurture, assist, and sustain
…..I cook!
Please buy slave's cookbook:
The Little Black Book of Indiscreet Recipes by Dan White
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The Sacred Band of Thebes
The Sacred Band of Thebes was a troop of select soldiers, consisting of 150 pairs of male lovers which formed an elite force in the Army of Thebes back in the 4th century BC. The fact that it consisted exclusively of married male couples makes it unprecedented. It also has some more narrow-minded scholars trying to disprove the whole idea.
For nearly fourty years this Theban army was the predominant fighting force in Greece. It gained a reputation of being invincible, beating overwhelming numbers. Athenian Dinarchus mentions the Sacred Band as being led by the generals Pelopidas and Epaminondas. (lovers).
Plutarch (46–120 AD) is the source of the most substantial surviving account of the Sacred Band. The exact date of the Sacred Band's creation has been generally accepted as between 379 and 378 BC.
According to Plutarch, the 300 hand-picked men were chosen purely for ability and merit, regardless of social class. The Sacred Band was composed of men "devoted to each other by mutual obligations of love". They exchanged sacred vows between lover and beloved at the shrine of Iolaus.
"lovers and their favorites, thus indicating the dignity of the god Eros in that they embrace a glorious death in preference to a dishonorable and reprehensible life".
The Sacred Band was stationed in Cadmea as a standing force. Their regular training included wrestling and dance as well as equestrian training.
It is estimated the recruits were the ages of 20 to 21, whereupon they were given a full set of armor by their “erastai”. They likely ended their service at age 30.
The Sacred Band was united as a single unit of shock troops. Their main function was to cripple the enemy by engaging and killing their best men and leaders in battle.
The Sacred Band first saw action in 378 BC. A Spartan expedition had been led against Thebes. The entire Spartan army began to advance. It was hoped that the sight of the massed Spartan forces moving forward would be enough to intimidate the Theban and Athenian forces into breaking ranks. With scarcely 660ft separating the two armies the Spartans expected them to run. Instead, the men were ordered to stand at ease.
In unison, they immediately assumed the resting posture—with the spear remaining pointing upwards instead of towards the enemy, and the shield propped against the left knee instead of being hoisted at the shoulders. The audacity of the maneuver and the discipline of the execution was such that the Spartans halted the advance. They thought it wiser to withdraw.
The Spartan generals began making various raids into Theban territory. These forays became so destructive that by the end of the summer, the Thebans went out in force.
The harassing by Spartan light infantry appeared to prove too much for the Thebans and they started to retreat. The Spartans rashly pursued them too closely. However, the Theban forces suddenly wheeled around and charged. The general was killed by the Theban cavalry, and the Spartans broke ranks and fled.
After this, The Scared Band faced the Spartans with confidence. The exact number of belligerents on each side varies by account. Most put the number of Thebans at 500 against the Spartans' 1,000.
The battle, while minor, was remarkable for being the first time a Spartan force had been defeated in a pitched battle, dispelling the myth of Spartan invincibility. It left a deep impression in Greece and boosted morale.
In Plutarch's own words:
“For in all the great wars there had ever been against Greeks or barbarians, the Spartans were never before beaten by a smaller company than their own; nor, indeed, in a set battle, when their number was equal. Hence their courage was thought irresistible, and their high repute before the battle made a conquest already of enemies, who thought themselves no match for the men of Sparta even on equal terms.”
After 40 years of supremacy, the Scared Band met defeat at the Battle of Chaeronea (338 BC). It was at the hands of Philip II of Macedon, with his son Alexander (the great). The battle is the culmination of Philip's campaign in preparation for a war against Persia. The Theban army and its allies broke and fled, but the Sacred Band, although surrounded and overwhelmed, refused to surrender. They held their ground and Plutarch records that all 300 fell where they stood beside their last commander, Theagenes.
Their defeat at the battle was a significant victory for Philip, since until then, the Sacred Band was regarded as invincible throughout all of Ancient Greece. Plutarch records that Philip II, on encountering the corpses "heaped one upon another", understanding who they were, broke down and wept, exclaiming: “Perish any man who suspects that these men either did or suffered anything unseemly.”
After the battle, a tropaion was set up on the battlefield.
Pausanias in his Description of Greece mentions that the Thebans had erected a gigantic statue of a lion near the village of Chaeronea, surmounting the common tomb of the Thebans killed in battle against Philip. The Greek historian Strabo (c. 64 BC–24 AD) also mentions "tombs of those who fell in the battle" erected at public expense in Chaeronea.
In 1818, a British architect named George Ledwell Taylor spent a summer in Greece and stumbled across the massive head of a stone lion which he guessed to be the same lion mentioned by Pausanias.
Excavations brought to light 254 skeletons, laid out in seven rows. The skeletons are generally accepted to be the remains of the Sacred Band.
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