Ham and Cannellini Bean Soup

If you know me then you know I love to cook.  For me, it is my stress relief at the end of the day.  I can come home, go in my kitchen and chop my cares away.  It is the one place that I can be as creative as my ingredients will let me and where I can pretty much control everything that goes on.  Now, let me digress for a moment, this time of year is every NC teacher's favorite time of the year....not really.  We get paid the day we get out for Christmas vacation and then have to go six weeks before another paycheck so, as you can imagine, towards the middle of January I have to get even more creative than usual in the kitchen.  Ok, back to the point. Yesterday I cooked a ham with the intention of making it last for at least three meals...very budget friendly.  Last night we had the "typical" ham dinner which was a great success and even the oldest of the little men left the table happy, a huge accomplishment!  After dinner, homework, baths, and "good nights" last night I sat down to plan my next meal with my tasty ham.  I looked through my cookbooks for inspiration and even visited one of my favorite blogs and nothing....don't you just hate that!?!?  So I went to work today with no idea of what to make for dinner.  Well, after a breezy and cold thirty minutes on the playground it hit me....soup!  So, as soon as I got home I went through the bare bones of my cabinet and there they were....cannellini beans..YES!  Long story short, I know too late, here is what I made. * Please know that I never use exact measurements which is why I am a terrible baker and couldn't make a decent cookie if my life depended on it!

Ingredients

Olive oil
A couple of cups of diced ham
2 cans of cannellini beans (drained and rinsed)
1 box of fat free, low sodium chicken broth
1 palm full of both herbes de provence and rosemary
1/2 an onion diced
1 carrot diced

I started out by putting a bit of olive oil in the pot and adding my carrot and onion and cooking until the onion became translucent.  I then added my ham and cooked for another 5 - 7 minutes before adding both cans of beans.  I let the beans cook just long enough for them to get a bit soft and then added the herbs and let everything cook for about two minutes.  Next I added the box of chicken stock and let everything simmer for about 30 minutes.  Once the soup was done I added salt and pepper to taste and blended it with my immersion blender.  I also made corn bread from the recipe on my favorite Greek yogurt container and used it as little croutons in our soup.  Not bad for a thrown together meal!