The end of the garden is sad, but can make for a really easy recipe to use up some things that are ending. OK, so I didn’t grow the potatoes or raise the hog, lol, but a simple dish with 3 garden ingredients makes some hearty lunches. Cooked the ham hock, pulled it apart and put the meat back in the broth. (Bones cooked in any soup-y dish add so much flavor to food.) Cleaned the collards and cut them into small pieces and added them. Shelled the Lima beans and added them. Had the shelly beans (the beans that are in green beans when you let them on the plant to dry) soaked overnight and added them. Cut up a potato and added that.
The ham hock should simmer a couple hours to make the broth good and make the meat easy to separate. The fat and other waste goes out back for the creatures of the night, and will have disappeared by dawn. The veggies only need to cook maybe 30 minutes since I soaked the shelly beans overnight.
Simple, hearty, good, good for you. Not much fat to a ham hock and not much sodium in them either, compared to other forms of ham. Add a salad or a hunk of crusty bread and mmmmmm!
Sarasin's thoughts....... 
Looks really good
Thanks for visiting my blog. It is, you should try it! You could add cabbage or substitute it for the collards if you wanted to. Versatile!
Do you ever replace potatoes with turnips in recipes.
Turnips are something I don’t like cooked, but I do eat them raw. I know lots of people do substitute them for potatoes. Parsnips is another thing, an old time thing my grandmother loved, but I don’t care for them.
Bon appétit!
Some things are good even without chocolate Herman, amazing isn’t it?
That looks yummy! I may try it and substitute the ham hock broth with fresh vegetable stock.
Yea, it could be a meatless meal and still be very good! Hope you like it. You could also substitute cabbage for collards.
Oh now thats a good idea!
Fresh collards take a little work to get ready, and cabbage is easy. And cabbage is good!
Easy is always a good thing as far as I’m concerned! I love soup especially during the winter months.