Minted Sweet Pea Soup

Daddy wasn't home for supper tonight, so the girls & I went hunting for a recipe to try that WE would like and HE wouldn't. The girls decided they wanted soup (because, you know, 90+ degree weather in September is perfect soup weather LOL, but we have A/C so whatever . . .) so we started browsing the myriad of recipes I bookmark and never get around to trying. And we found this one.  I was SURE we had a huge bag of frozen peas in the freezer, so said yes, we could definitely make it. Only to realize, as we started to cook, that we apparently finished the huge bag and ate half of a smaller bag, so all I had was 1/2 lb of peas.  However, I DID have several bags of baby lima beans in the freezer (they're one of the few veggies hubby likes, so we eat them often), so we decided to use half peas & half lima beans. It was still a yummy soup, but we all felt that it would be BETTER with straight peas, so we'll be re-making this soon with all peas.  Here's the recipe, with my modifications:

1/3 c butter
1 lb peas
1/2 c water
some chopped onions (I didn't measure)
2 1/2 c milk or half-and-half (we use raw milk, I was opening a new gallon anyway & it's hard to mix teh cream in w/o pouring some off the top to give it more room, so I poured some cream into the measuring cup & then shook the rest in & finished measuring with the whole milk, so slightly creamier than whole milk not quite half & half, would be my guess)
1-2 tsp fresh mint, snipped (didn't measure, but I'd guess we used at least 3-4 tsp and could have used more)
salt to taste
chives for garnish

In a med saucepan melt the butter on low heat, then add peas, water & onions .  Cook 15-20 min for fresh peas, 5-10 minutes for frozen peas. Don't over-cook, you want the peas tender, not mushy.

Remove from burner, let cool slightly. Add milk, mint and salt. Puree with immersion blender. Return to burner and heat till heated through, do not boil.  Garnish with snipped chives &/or snipped mint.

For the 3 of us (plus sharing numerous bites with Little Bit), one recipe wasn't enough for a main dish, we'll be doubling this recipe in the future.