Leftover Ham 101

Ham is a very versatile food. Even after devouring our baked ham (which was a lovely meal altogether), roughly 4 lbs remained, making me very happy. Baked ham makes very nice leftovers. The ham hock works well for split pea soup. I love adding diced ham to cheesy scrambled eggs, so I set aside 2 lbs (in 0.5 lb portions) in freezer bags for that purpose. I have a recipe for quiche that I've been wanting to try. It calls for about 1 lb. of ham, so I put that aside as well. For the remaining just about 1 lb., I thought of soup.

Yesterday was a gloomy kind of day. The temperature hovered near 70 and the sun did not want to come out. Since this is what passes for winter in Florida, I thought a nice wintery soup would suffice.

The boys and I went to Wal-Mart. Why Wal-Mart, not Publix? I needed a pan that they don't carry at Publix. What pan? This one:

It's a tart pan, good for making quiche (and presumably tarts). The pan does this:

I assume this will be handy when I make quiche. I'll let you know.

While I was in the pan aisle, I gave in to temptation and also bought this pan:

We eat 1-2 breakfast loaves every week. I think making mini-loaves will help us to eat a more appropriate portion size. The mini-loaves will also be easier to freeze and store.

Anyhow, back to the soup. The package of 15 bean soup was very inexpensive. First, you soak the beans for many hours (at least 8) so that your friends, family and coworkers don't have to hide from you.

 

Once the beans have finished soaking, it takes another 2-3 hours to cook the soup. It felt like a good day to make bread, so I pulled out my favorite bread-making cookbook and picked a recipe.

 

 

Dinner was scheduled roughly for 6 p.m., so Mr. Smarty Pants and I started making buttermilk bread at 3 o'clock. Why so early? The dough had to rise twice. Here's how the two loaves looked right after we pulled them out of the oven:

 

 

By then, the 15 bean soup was nearly ready:

 

We sliced the bread and buttered it. It was super yummy!

 

So was the soup.