Our New Recipe with great help!

I love to cook and I recently got the idea of making our own Ham and Bean soup recipe to post on our new website. Everyone asks me what do they do with a ham hock, so I thought I would give them some ideas. I first started by making our own bean mixture. Hans and Dane loved helping me with this part. We got a variety of about 20 pounds of beans and mixed them together. We used Small whites, Black Beans, Lentils, Small Reds, Dark Red Kidney beans, Large Limas, Green split Peas, Great Northerns, and Pinto Beans. There were beans all over the kitchen. Some were wasted, but it was worth letting the kids do the pouring and mixing. Then I simmered one of our Ham Hocks for a few hours with some spices. I added the beans (only 2 cups), some tomato paste, salsa and a few more things and cooked for a few more hours. It turned out delicious! At dinner Hans and Dane kept saying, "this is soooo goood! We are such good cooks." I thought they were pretty cute! For the past few years we have bought the Honey Baked Ham bone (this was before we did our own pigs of course) and used their spice pack and recipe, but this was so much better and I loved that the kids could help too!