Before The Easter Ham Soup

Every Easter, we always serve glazed ham to our guests. John has begun to call our Easter dinner as a Ham - O - Rama.

I can't wait for this year's ham, so in order to calm my ham cravings I'm making a soup that will have to tide me over. I don't know what to call it. But it's good.

I start out by putting a blob of butter in my porcelain coated cast iron soup pot. Best soup pot ever. Then I soften a coarsely chopped onion in the butter. I toss in two ham shanks, and let them brown just a teensy bit.

After washing and cleaning a bag of soup beans - you know, the kind that has a zillion different kinds of beans and lentils in it - I add them and a big can of chopped tomatoes to the ham and onions.

Am I the only person that has a phobia about all the germs that live on electric can openers? I use a manual one that I can toss in the dishwasher.

Yes, it gets rusty pretty quickly in the dishwasher. I wait until it's really gross then I just buy another one.

Then I put enough water in the pot so that the level is a couple inches under the rim, throw in a couple of globs of minced garlic, a sprinkle of salt, and let it simmer for about six hours.

I stir it every now and then and add water as needed. Taste for and adjust seasonings at about five hours.

Those soup beans in a bag come with a little silver packet of seasoning. Since I'm a suspicious type of person, and they don't list the ingredients in that little packet, I just toss it in the garbage.

This ham-tomato-bean-onion-garlic soup tastes great with a couple of baking powder biscuits, or a slab of sourdough bread.

Like my groovy little Easter bunny plates by the stove?