Last Sunday was Easter and like most American families, we too celebrated with a traditional ham dinner. We started the day with a bloody Mary and some smoked salmon, garnished with slices of red onions and cappers on saltines. Then it was time for church. We belong to Westminster Presbyterian and the church had a very nice service on the internet – Facebook – and folks were able to send imojis when they were moved by personal emotions. I posted that sometimes God has to create a disaster as a wakeup call to send us a message. Remember the story of the great flood and Noah’s ark? The coronavirus thing has brought out the best in most of us. Remember how divided we were as a nation before all this happened. Now look at us, all pitching in to help each other and the common message – “We’re in this together”.
Back to the ham dinner – Ginny went to Acme and purchased the smallest ham she could find – it was 9-pound spiral sliced and was on special – she paid $14.74! What a bargain, but also a huge challenge of what to do with all that ham. Typically, the extended family would come over and help consume about three quarters, maybe even taking a few slices home for a next day, ham and cheese sandwich lunch. So, I went on a google search and came up with many ways to use left over ham. Here’s what I found, but wait – before I go into that, let me share our Easter dinner first.
Since the COVID 19 thing has us all hunkered down in our individual houses, we scheduled the dinner on Zoom at 1 PM. Our dinner consisted of cheese souffle, sweet potatoes simmered in brown sugar and molasses, freshly grilled asparagus, freshly baked dinner rolls, the ham of course and our usual Sunday mimosas. After dinner, Ginny took the hambone and made her usual split pea soup to be distributed next week.
So, I learned that the best way to freeze left over ham is to wrap them tightly with aluminum foil, then put them in tightly sealed freezer bags. I think I made eight such bags, each containing about 10 oz of ham of varying shapes, mostly nicely sliced but some were in chunks. I realize Easter ham, like Thanksgiving turkeys have many ways to serve as leftovers. Typically, we resort to mac and cheese with ham and ham fried rice but with just the two of us, I never had to deal with all this ham. One search lead me to Jambalaya, a Cajun favorite. Since the French term for ham is Jambon, and Cajun having the French connection, surely this dish had ham but to my surprise, several recipes I researched had no ham – just chicken, andouille sausages and shrimp. So, I decided to substitute the chicken with ham. Try it, you might like it.
This led me to the conclusion that I should be able to make that substitution with many other recipes that call for chicken or turkey – mostly casseroles but even enchiladas and sliders. Couple of the more interesting recipes I found were – a quiche, and bits of ham chunks in your pasta salad. So, let your imagination (and creation) go wild. One of my Sunday favorites is eggs benedict, with a home-made hollandaise sauce. This typically calls for Canadian bacon but a thick slice of ham works just as well.
Bill Melver
Akron, Ohio
“Bill Melver is an interesting local personality, having founded the Akron Life & Leisure Magazine in 2002, ran for mayor of Akron in 2015 and now an aspiring author with his first book “An American Samurai: Born to Righteousness”, will be released soon. You can also learn more about Bill on his website www.BillMelver.com
