Bean Soup or Soup Beans?

    I thought a good meal for Super Bowl Sunday would be to cook up a large pot of Bean Soup. . .or is it Soup Beans?  Which do you say?  I find myself saying both, but perhaps the latter is a just a southeastern Ohio-ism.  Of course, I had to cook up some corn bread to go along with it. 

    Remember the old rhyme, "Pease porridge hot, pease porridge cold, pease porridge in the pot nine days old."  Well, in the old days some small beans were reffered to as "pease" (i.e. the navy pea), so "pease porridge" is like soup beans.  So, there is truth to the ryhme.  It goes on: "Some like it, some like it cold, some like it in the pot nine days old."  I'm not sure I really like it cold, but I do agree that it gets better the longer it cooks.  For the next couple of days the leftovers just get better.  Although, nine days is a bit of stretch--as much as I love it, I usually get sick of it after a couple of days.  If I fix a pot of soup and we're not having a party there is always a lot leftover, so I either freeze it, or as I did this time, I package it up to share with Grandma (who LOVES bean soup) and my cousins. 

    I really love growing beans in my garden.  I grow over 25 varieties of heirloom beans.  They are all so pretty and interesting--the little booklet I give with a jar of beans describes all of the varieties, as well as my soup recipe, which is the one my Granny used to  make.  And not too mention the taste!  I may be biased, but I really think all of the different types of beans give my soup a unique flavor.  February was supposed to the month when I shell all of the beans I harvested this fall.  Oops--the month is almost half over already and I haven't really started.  I better get crackin'--I mean shellin'!

Heirloom Bean Mix

Be sure to soak your beans overnight, so for this meal you kind of have to plan ahead.

This is the ham bone leftover from our Thanksgiving ham.  It has been in the freezer since then.  I used it to flavor the beans and there is actually enough meat left on that bone for the whole pot.  If you don't have a hambone in the freezer you can put ham chunks in the soup, but I would add a hamhock as well.  That will give it the good flavor.

Drained Beans

Cornbread cooked in an iron cornbread skillet.  This was baked in the oven not fried; I just set it on the burner so you can see it better.

Final product.  So yummy!!