beans Variety Bean soup

I wanted to use up the half package of already soaked 16 variety beans that I had put in the eggplant stew the last time I made it. This time I did not want to put beans in the eggplant stew, but to try to find the fine simple taste I managed with my first try.

I had a hambone and leeks I bought from Canajoharie farmers. So I boiled them all together with the beans for a while and it all made a really wonderful broth. I tossed in about a quarter cup of broth left from my meal of canned spinach. A bit of spinach was in the broth but just enough to mildly flavor.

I decided that the hambone was much too large and had too much good ham left on it for this small batch of soup. I was worried I'd have a ham soup flavored with beans rather than the other way around, so after it had flavored the broth, I pulled the bone out and refroze the it for the next split pea soup. While this is not the meatless goal of Fuhrman's diet, it sure stretches out the affects of meat in the diet.

The result tastes wonderful.
I am still unsure how long to cook the beans. I like the taste just as they are, but one lima bean was underdone probably because it was so much larger than the others. A few bits of ham were left in the broth and I fished them out and cut them into very tiny pieces.