Rain
My wife ordered some Habitant French Pea Soup (a classic from back home) form Amazon a few months ago.
It looked quite diluted compared to what I remember, but apparently it did the job.
Me I don't eat pork products, so I guess I'll never know.
'Abitant!!! A Canadian classic. Oh I have stories of how those wonderful yellow cans kept me alive in the olden days.
The quality does seem to have gone downhill a bit but it still manages to get the job done. What really ticks me off is that they've essentially doubled/tripled the price. Used to be you could get one of the big cans for between $0.80-1.20. Now it's almost 3 bucks for the same can (with less hammy/pea-ey goodness).
But yeah... ole Habitant is the goal when I make this stuff... except better.
It's lookin' good.
As far as doing it without pork I think one could easily replace all that with some nice, skin on, chicken legs/thigh baked up and the grease saved.
I used chicken grease as my pea lubricant the last couple times I made this (with the green peas) as opposed to bacon/pork grease.
This time I had actual pork leavin's from a hunk of pork roast I made the other night (I got a huge slab last week for under $2 a pound). That was the "loob" and I had some ham steaks in my freezer that weren't sliced for this exact purpose.
It's smellin' goooood.