This recipe is a fond memory and a holiday tradition. My husband had never heard of Navy bean and Ham Soup before he married me, so I got a chance to introduce this to him. Now I'm introducing it to everyone with an illustrated step-by-step recipe!
This soup probably isn't what you think of when you hear "ham and bean soup". My family makes it completely different from anyone else I've met, or anywhere I've found on the internet. Where normally this type of soup involves a lot of veggies (basically chicken noodle but with ham and beans) my family keeps it very simple. Like many traditional family recipes, this was passed down to me verbally. There are no measurements or quantities, you just "use as much as you need".
Initial Draft
Concept and color draft for the final piece.
Initially I was planning to hand-letter the whole recipe. I wanted to represent and label every ingredient, and that very quickly got busy. This is a simple soup, and I wanted to keep the image simple too. I did leave my own natural handwriting in for the Title.