Long weekend cooking

Well, knowing that I don't have to go to class on Monday and can use that for work time, I went to bed yesterday as soon as I got tired and slept as many hours as my body wanted to. This morning I inexplicably woke up at 8 and was just ready to go, so I went and started washing dishes and cutting up potatoes...

Ingredients:

1 cup dry navy beans, soaked overnight
2 smoked ham hocks
4 chopped up potatoes
around 2 cups of frozen ham and bean broth from when I made navy beans and ham last time
a bit of minced garlic (minced with my garlic twist, actually! thanks, Tyler!)
pepper

So, I was really excited about going to my very first neighborhood butcher shop ever. But I was also anxious about it, because I've never been in one before. It seemed very advanced, cooking-wise, and also potentially very loud. Because ham bones are sort of waste, and probably a lot of them get thrown away, I thought I was being helpful and resourceful to want to buy them and use them up.

So I made this whole plan about how when I got home from classes I was going to stop at the butcher shop and then go home and soak the beans and so on and then I could start the soup in the morning. I got off the bus, walked to the butcher shop... which, it turns out, is closed. Sadface. Being a little disappointed, I walked over to the grocery store, and they turned out to have smoked ham hocks, so that's okay too.
 
So I put those in the crockpot, along with the leftover ham and bean broth, the navy beans, and a lot of water. Then I cut up some of my potatoes, which I'm hoping will thicken the broth even further and maybe have some delicious potato chunks still in there. I got everything all in the crockpot, turned it to high, and it's been in there since then. I'm very excited. It smells yummy. I want to eat it now! (Well, until I go look at it and realize it's not even close to done. But still.)

Now, time for eating lunch and then actually doing work!

Soup addendum: At the suggestion of some of my friends, I've also crumbled up some leftover stale bread into the soup, which apparently will result in thickening the soup further, as well as reducing waste. Hurray!