First attempt at canning "convenience" food - Bean Soup!

I can vegetable beef soup and chili quite often. We have soup quite often on Sundays during football season so I make big batches, take out enough for dinner and can the rest. It makes for some easy meals the following summer when I don't want to heat up the house by cooking anything.

I don't do bean soup too often but when I do, I usually have a ham bone to toss in. It adds lots of flavor and plenty of salt on its own. Also, the last bits of meat that fall off the bone make it extra hardy!

I got the idea for the recipe from those "dry friendship soup" in a jar type things. However, I didn't have all the beans at my local bulk bins, so I used:

• 1 c of all the beans (Navy, Pinto, Kidney, Red Northern, and Garbanzo)
• 1 large onion, diced
• 4 Bay leaves
• 2 garlic cloves

Boiled all of this together as you would for dried beans

Then in each jar, put in pinches of oregano, thyme, salt, and crushed red pepper flakes.
Processed at 75 min at my respective altitude pressure.

I got 9 pints out of this (because that's all that can fit in my canner). I boiled a bit extra along side of it and tasted it - not bad! I wanted to put bacon in it for flavor, but found out that's a no-no, so I'll just add that as I'm boiling it for 10 min before eating. Could definitely use the pizazz.

Really just needed a soup that didn't need defrosting for those quick days in the winter. Anyone have any favorite soup recipes they can?