Out of angst and back to your regularly scheduled content. Dinner turned out well so I thought I’d share. This isn’t quite as fast a prep as some of the others but not too bad. Based on a Beans n Ham Soup recipe.
Crock Pot Ham & Beans
1 lb. dried white beans
1 ham bone with some meat left on it
6 c. water
2 c. chopped onion
1 c. chopped celery
1 c. diced carrot
garlic, salt, and pepper to taste (I used half of one of those little jars of roasted garlic packed in oil and about 1 1/2 tsp. each of salt and pepper.)
The night before rinse the beans and put them to soak in the crock pot. Put about 2″ more water than needed to cover. The next morning drain them off, add the remaining ingredients and let it cook 8-9 hours. Pull the ham bone out. Take any remaining meat off the bone. Toss the bone and add the meat back into the beans. You may want to add some more chopped ham either at the beginning or the end if you like more ham in your beans. Serve with cornbread.
If you want to make it easier use the chopped frozen onion and frozen sliced carrots or the little matchstick carrots you can buy for salad. I like to buy celery and chop the whole thing and freeze it in a big zippered freezer bag so I can take out what I need and it doesn’t go to waste. Admittedly you’re not going to put it in salad but it’s great for soups. I premeasure all the veggies and seasoning into a bowl the night before and just dump it in the crock pot in the morning so I don’t have to think about it before I have coffee.
Product Reviews
We actually went to Aldi last weekend for the first time and one of the things we got was their cornbread mix. I added about 2 Tbs of honey and it was really good. While I’m on the subject of new products, Krusteaz makes great lemon bar mix (pricey though but you can find it on sale occasionally). Well, now they make mango bar mix. The reviews are mixed. I baked it up after the cornbread to conserve oven heat and they taste good but it’s not a strong mango flavor. There was a recipe on the box for using the mix plus 2 c. whipping cream and some coconut and making a mango/coconut pie which I may have to try next time I see it on sale. It’s basically the Key Lime Pie recipe but with toasted coconut added in and sprinkled on top. I also baked some chocolate scones using some Trader Joe’s chocolate chocolate chip baking mix. Yum. I love Trader Joe’s.
this sounds wonderful—thank you so much for sharing it!
-steph