Yellow Split Pea Soup

Split peas are basically lentils bigger brother that really isn't spoken of much. If you really want to make a soup or the like that requires lentils, split peas will substitute in fine and have a large amount of protein and iron as well. However, the only place I really see or have heard of them being used is in Split Pea soup, which I always imagined as a kind of being made of green garden peas and therefore pretty gross sounding. Once again, my conception was terribly off base(I mainly subsided on Northern Eurpean/Irish food as a kid, so I didn't know about all these things) and the soup is actually delicious. The recipes I found were fairly sparse in flavorings though, so I mixed the ones I found with Vegan Dad's tarka dahl recipe, keeping the parts of each that I preferred. My composite:

Yellow Split Pea Soup

1 cup split peas, rinsed
2 cups water
1" ginger, minced
3-4 garlic cloves, minced
1 large onion, cut into crescents
2 tbsp oil
1/2 tsp turmeric
2 tsp red chili flakes, or two large whole dried chilis
1/4-1/2 tsp salt, to taste mainly

1/4-1/2 tsp ground mustard, optional

Cook the onion, ginger, and garlic in a pot with the oil until the onions are translucent. Add in all of the other ingredients and cook until the split peas are very soft(they will basically disintegrate) and serve hot. Make sure not to undercook the split peas, I did that one time and it ends poorly.