wham! bam! thank you, ham!

(originally from march 31st 2011.)

honey ham, precious taters and pineapple sauce.

staying true to the theme of pork this week, the star of last night’s menu was a ham. no paparazzi please.

now, i know what you’re thinking - ham is not a casual wednesday night meal and it should be reserved for special occasions like christmas or easter or passover. wait…

but you’re wrong. ham is the perfect wednesday night meal. it is for this reason that i have decided to christen wednesday “ham day” instead of “hump day”. yes, i do have that power.

please note: i am not suggesting that ham become your new sexual partner.

ham day: (n) a holiday celebrated every wednesday during which people show their love and devotion to ham by eating copious amounts of it and wearing clothes made out of it a la lady gaga.

to celebrate this week’s ham day, i began gathering ingredients. since i wanted the glaze on the ham to be sweet, i figured i’d need either brown sugar or honey. but when i went to the cupboard, the cupboard was bare, mother hubbard.

so i went to the next best place. the cafeteria. did you know that they give out honey and sugar are free? no? neither did the clerk :) 007 theresa makes another appearance. glaze supplies acquired.

when i returned from my heist, the preparations began. after i got rid of the cops. just kidding, mom.

ham preparation was very easy. it is a method i learned from a HAMster with a pulled HAMstring while i was visting the small HAMlet of soutHAMpton.

okay, let’s be honest - i read the instructions on the ham’s package.

here’s what you do: place a ham in a roasting pan (or if you’re a poor university student, a foil cake pan) with 1/4 cup of water and cover it with honey. roast for an hour. you can add honey again halfway through if you want. really, whatever floats your ham day boat.

on to the taters, precious. now, if you are a bug-eyed sickly looking creature from middle earth (thanks for reading, btw) you might be wondering “what’s taters, precious?!” to answer that question, i give you these:

peeled bebe potatoes seasoned with S&P, garlic, rosemary, her baby, just kidding, thyme and a bit of cayenne. these potatoes are very versatile and go with almost anything. i’ve heard you can boil them, mash them or serve them with ham. if you choose option C, roast them for about 45 minutes.

there’s a lot of roasting going tonight. roast a marshmallow too.

next on the menu was a pineapple sauce.

let me start by saying that if you’ve never tried the combination of ham and pineapple, you’ve never lived. so get to your nearest pizza pizza and order a tropical hawaiian slice - the consumption of any other brand of pizza will be met with disapproval.

or make this sauce for your ham.

it calls for a can of crushed pineapple, but i just threw 1/2 a pineapple in a magic bullet and it did the trick. throw this in a pot. if you cannot throw, pour it nicely.

NEXT, you add 1/2 cup of brown sugar.

note to self: adopt the nickname brown sugar.

then you add a tablespoon of ketchup, mustard and a bit of salt. bring this to a boil then reduce the heat and let it simmer.

the end. now you serve. that’s the easiest part, right? wrong.

the story that follows still brings tears of devastation to my eyes.

after roasting my magnificent ham for over an hour and tending to its every honey-related need, there was an accident. i was cutting it into slices on a cutting board, i then i went to transfer them onto a serving plate and catastrophe ensued.

it fell. on the floor. but by the grace of god, some slices managed to avoid the tumble and found their rightful place in the serving dish.

now, readers, i have struggled internally for several hours over whether to tell you the true outcome of this story. but in the end, i decided to act in accordance with the immortal words of ghandi (or was it amanda?) that “the truth shall set you free.”

i hope you can handle the truth, jack nicholson.

so here it is: after a slew of sobs and profanities, i picked up my fallen masterpiece. and served it anyway, as is law under the legislation of the 5 second rule.

5 Second Rule: (n) a standard of law by which a person can justify their actions of eating food that they have dropped on the floor for a very short period of time. the name of this law must be exclaimed in just such circumstances for it to take effect. otherwise, ya nasty.

HEY! before you go ahead and judge me, judy, i’ll have you know i paid $15 for that slab of meat and there was NO WAY i was throwing it all out. chef or not, i am still a penniless university student.

please note: my guest was aware that this happened and was in agreement with this decision. also, i did inspect the fallen pieces and ensure that they were clean before serving them to my guest. i’m not a savage.

this is what it looked like when i plated it:

i garnished it with some pineapple pieces that i tossed in a pan with some brown sugar.

okay, i’m guessing you’re still kind of grossed out, and i’ll admit, i was too. i expected the fallen pieces to be neglected and to go hungry.

once again, i was wrong. the roommate review will explain:

this is stand-in roommate amanda. she is not only exceptionally skilled at being the subject of candid photography, but she is also a complete trooper for not walking out on this meal after the accident. for that same reason, she may not live out the week. good thing i had her sign a waver. just kidding.

here’s what she had to say:

“theresa has always known that the pineapple-ham combination is one that brings me to my knees, as she has been my hawaiian pizza provider for years now. this ham was particularly delicious, you could hardly even taste the floor! she had to stop me from drinking the honey glaze straight from the pan. the taters were scrumptious. i ate them with the pineapple sauce and was pleasantly surprised by how good it was. the entire meal was complemented quite nicely by a coke zero. overall, hats off to the chef. 9/10.”

it’s true. she really liked it.

after the first few pieces we were overcome by the deliciousness and completely disregarded the floor incident. we ate every morsel.

i know it’s not good form to toot one’s own horn, but since i was not born with horns, i am permitted to say that the meal was delicious. the ham was great on its own, but combining it with the pineapple sauce or dipping it in the honey glaze just knocked it out of the park. the potatoes were great too - i thought the combination of spices might be a little odd but it really worked. overall, fan-friggin’-tastic.

i had planned on eating ham for several days after this due to an excess of left-overs. it was a pretty big ham. there was talk of ham kabob, ham creole, ham gumbo, ham soup, ham salad, ham burger and ham sandwich. none of these came to pass. it was that good.

the moral of the story: if you’re going to celebrate ham day, secure your ham for transport and employ the 5 second rule to avoid missing out on delicious meals like this one.

well, that’s what was cooking in rez last night!

thanks for reading :)