Easter Ham Leftover Stew

As a family we are trying to be less wasteful. This is not easy, especially with kids, but one way that we are are doing this is with food. We are making a conscious effort to use up leftovers and (hopefully) not throw them away. We would always save leftovers, thinking they would get eaten, but more often than not and more often than I care to admit, we were throwing food away. Over the course of a year it ends up being a lot of food.

 So we are menu planning, and using what we have before we buy more. And at least one meal a week is cooked using leftovers. This week it was leftover Easter ham.

For Easter, my youngest son had requested that my husband cook a boiled dinner and as this is easy, fairly inexpensive, and something the whole family likes, we readily agreed. Yes, my husband cooks for holidays. I am spoiled, I know and as I tell him often I am the luckiest girl in the world, and yes he cleans up after himself too! Anyway, we had a TON of ham and a ham bone leftover. None of us care for pea soup, so what to do???

Make my friend's Slow Cooker Ham & Bean Stew of course!!! It was delicious, easy to make, and used up a lot of our leftovers! I used a combination of Kidney and Pinto beans and everything we already had in our pantry. You could easily add more veggies to this and make it to fit your families tastes. I found it smelled wonderfully like baked beans but was definitely more of a stew. It was very filling and as it was a cold blustery spring day here in Maine, it was perfect having a nice hot stew for dinner. There's just something about soup that warms the soul on a cold day, don't you agree?

So head on over to cook.can.read, tell her Amy sent you and find a delicious new recipe to cook and a great book to read!