We eat very little red meat (including pork) in our household, so when we do indulge in it, the experience can be transforming. I am convinced now, that Ralph Cramden, of The Honeymooners fame, had a good reason behind his famous stammer. Whenever he found himself excited, he would utter not, “Humminah, Huminah,” but actually “Hammina Hammina.” For those of your too young to remember The Honey Mooners in rerun, I point you to YouTube to see what I mean.
Anyway, my husband does the prep work and cooking whenever we have ham. With a mixture of brown sugar, pineapple rings and some sort of secret glaze, the sweet meets the salty in just the perfect proportions. I can’t divulge the recipe, because well, I’m not really privy to it. He claims it is something he just puts together each time. Real cooks don’t need recipes, right? Ha.
My own contribution has to do simply with trying new recipes to use up some of the leftover ham. (My husband chooses a ham that is large enough to feed the neighborhood.) This is a struggle since no one wants to eat the ham any other way that in its original way, prepared by the head male of the family.
I did manage to sneak about two cups worth into a baked egg dish, which while I thought was delicious, the rest of the family declared a complete waste of good ham, never mind the fact that we still had about five pounds of it sliced and in the refrigerator. “This is quiche,” my husband said. The implication is that it is sacrilege to take a strong ingredient like ham and make it part of something more delicate.
So here we are, in day four of a week of ham, interrupted once by a night of tacos. The mashed potatoes are starting to dry out, the glazed carrots are gone and will be replaced by corn, and I’ll have to make some new crescent rolls to try to capture the magic of the first ham night (well, actually the second was better, the ham having absorbed more fully the juices from the sauce).
“You know,” my husband said yesterday, “We should really incorporate more ham in our regular meals.”