hammin' it up

Today's question:  how many ways can a cook disguise, revise, redo, elevate, reheat, or re-serve yesterday's ham?

But first, a little background story...April 1997 Saveur magazine runs a story about dressing up a cheap smoked ham by slowly cooking the crap out it, while also glazing it up to be so amazingly delicious that it becomes the show stopper at all cocktail parties. Our little stay at home cook finds this story fascinating and promptly files the idea of said ham in her pretty little brain, while simultaneously forgetting which magazine she read it in.  Years pass, parties are thrown and opportunities to try the ham are lost, as the article cannot be found.

Yet the idea of the ham remains.  In fact our cook is so sure that she must have this recipe somewhere that one day she quietly sits looking through all the food zines she has kept, when viola!  The article reappears.  This time she marks the spine with a note that reads "The Ham Recipe Is In Here"

And finally on a rainy Tuesday in December, some 10 years or so later the recipe is tried - the ham is indeed delicious and the question posed at the beginning of this tale still remains.

What does one do with the leftovers of a 10 pound ham?   Send in your favorite recipes for using up yesterday's ham - I'll try them - if I like them, you get a mention here.

waffle iron grilled cheese

Today's theme is the illogical, the inane, and the oh hell, why not, let's try it?  It is raining, it is freezing inside this apartment and short of wanting to build tents out of blankets like when I was five - the day screams for a cooking adventure.

I never had an Easy Bake Oven.  The excuse my mother gave my sister and me had to do with the expense of the miniature cake mixes, the cost of light bulbs and the possibility of an electrical fire. Oh, and I'm pretty certain she threw in a bit about not cleaning up after ourselves.  For this, I was probably marred for life and now blame my fascination with devising multiple uses for kitchen utensils on this missing childhood toy.   Take my waffle iron for example.  Hasn't seen a waffle since I've owned it, but it has in recent months become the new grilled cheese/panini press.