Soup weather

Yesterday, I cooked a pot of soup.  This is mostly what I did - all day.  I didn't get out of my pajamas until an hour or so before the bus would be dropping off the twins from school.  Mostly because I'd be ashamed.

Must have been one helluva pot of soup, right?

It started with a leftover ham bone from our Christmas ham, from our local shop Hamm's on the square in McKinney.  Here's how it began:

I used a recipe from my trusty Better Homes and Gardens New Cook Book 10th Edition paperback, given to me by my mother before I made my graduate student trek to Venezuela in 1994.  Yes, I still have it.

It split in two somewhere along the way.  

But I wouldn't dare throw it away.  It's got recipes in there that aren't in later editions.  A dear friend gave me a new Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook, ring bound, that I also love - that is also falling apart.  

So I let this pot of soup simmer on the stove all day, while our new pup Bailey supervised.  

 After many hours, it looked like this:

and tasted delicious with a bit of cornbread, courtesy of this recipe from The New York Times.  Only our oldest son knew how delicious it was, however.  One twin refused to even try it, opting for Froot Loops for dinner instead.  The other twin delicately dipped his cornbread in his bowl, careful to hardly touch the soup and declared, "It's really good this way, Mom."  Thanks, son.

Pearls before swine, I tell you.  Pearls before swine.