David,
If the photos are already on your hard drive where you want them, there is no need to Ingest whatsoever. Just browse the files where they are. You can do the things Ingest does in a single process in a number of separate steps (Apply IPTC Stationery Pad, Rename, etc.) from the Contact Sheet.
Or, instead of manually copying your images to your computer from your CF card, just use Ingest to do the initial copy and backup for you.
HTH,
-Kirk