A little food culture/history for those who are also interested in such things. I've never heard of this before, but apparently it's something of a longstanding US tradition. Has anyone else heard of it, or cooked it?

I found the recipe when doing a search for recipes for dried haricot beans, which are called 'navy beans' in the States - as I often buy wholefoods in bulk, I still have a good percentage of a 3kg bag of dried haricots left to use up before they start getting too old and tough to cook properly. And there's only so many homemade baked beans one can endure, even though they are tasty!

So here's the Wiki link for Senate Bean Soup: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senate_bean_soup

And here's the link from the US Senate web site: http://www.senate.gov/reference/reference_item/bean_soup.htm

I thought it sounded really rather good, though I won't be including the ham (I'll include some smoked paprika instead.) I like the sound of how rich and creamy it is from the beans and mashed potatoes, should make a good main meal soup for us tomorrow, accompanied with cheesy straws :)

This is the vegan version I'll be cooking, the picture looks pretty inviting - yumyum! : http://kblog.lunchboxbunch.com/2012/06/senate-bean-soup-vegan-version.html