Soup of the Day: Lentil Vegetable Soup

I'm sure I'm not the only person who has leftover ham today! Our family had a wonderful Christmas holiday and the Honey-Baked Ham was certainly a hit.

Today I made a lentil soup with the leftover ham. I boiled the ham bone, covered in chicken broth for a couple of hours, until all the extra meat pieces were falling off the bone, getting the meat separated from the bone and any pieces of fat was a fairly straightforward procedure, but I had to let the meat cool a bit first.

To the broth I added:

2 cups Lentils
1 large carrot (peeled & chopped)
1 medium onion (chopped)
2 small bay leaves
2 tsp thyme
2 Tbs Italian seasoning
(celery would have been nice, but I didn't have any on hand)

I let this boil until the lentils and carrots were very soft, then pulled out the bay leaves.

I actually ended up with way too much broth, but it was pretty easy to pour some off without loosing any lentils to get the soup to the consistancy I wanted. This left me with about 2 cups of delicious broth to use in another recipie sometime.

When I divided this into containers for lunch size portions, I made sure that each one had some ham and lots of lentils.