Christmas Leftover Ham Soup

It's the day after Christmas and we are still eating food from the Noche Buena feast! The roast chicken has been deboned and sauteed with celery and red bellpeppers, the cheese we are still eating while having our family tradition of watching The Lord of The Rings trilogy extended dvds. What to do with the ham...I decided to slice it into thin pieces to store in containers inside the chiller. But the bones...hmm what better way to make use of it than in a soup! We received a basket of organic fresh vegetables and I made good use of it in this soup. Carrots, celery, onions...and there were some black beans in the pantry and oh, there was a bag of Penne Rigate that I also decided to use because I had no elbow Macaroni which would have been better suited to this kind of soup. At the last moment my sister requested the addition of milk to make it more like the Filipino sopas that we have not eaten in a long time.

Ingredients:

2 tablespoons Lauric Oil

5 pieces Carrots (small), diced

1 piece Onion, minced

2 stalks Celery, peeled and diced

2 pieces Ham bones

2 pieces Bay leaves, dried

1/2 cup Beans (I used black), soaked overnight

1/2 cup dried small pasta (I used Penne Rigate but elbow Macaroni is better)

Enough water to cover

Salt and Pepper to taste

Milk (optional)

Preheat pot with oil and saute carrots, onions and celery until soft. Add ham bones, water and bay leaves. Bring to a boil and then add in the beans and the pasta. I cooked this for about 30 minutes at a hard boil, then I turned down the heat and seasoned it with salt and pepper.

When it was cooked I added about 1/4 cup of milk and let it simmer for 5 minutes before turning off the heat. Serve hot.

It was a hearty addition to lunch today, and I think I found a new way of making use of ham bone! So how about you? What do you usually do with your Christmas leftover food?