20 May 08 Ham

At the weekend we bought half a ham. I never think it’s bad value, but it’s not something we get very often. I love ham, I have to resist the temptation to keep raiding the refrigerator when it’s in there.

We cooked it on Sunday. Boiled it for an hour in water with mustard added. That gets rid of some of the excess fat.

Then covered it with honey and brown sugar, and baked it in the oven.  Had that with some left over potato salad, and celery.

Last evening, I made roast potatoes, and cabbage, and gravy.

What to do tonight? Well, the previous weekend we’d gotten those jars of stuff at Edisto Delicacies (if you remember my previous posting), and the Gumbo was sitting there.

I added a decent amount of diced ham to the gumbo, and simmered it slowly, while cooking some rice. It was quite delicious, although a bit of a cheat I guess. There’s enough left for lunch tomorrow.

I also chopped up some more ham to make soup.

This is how I did that:

• 2 cups chopped ham
• half an onion
• 2 sticks of celery including leaves
• 1lb split peas
• 1/2 tbsp salt
• 3 small carrots

Basically put the whole lot in the crockpot, along with 1 3/4 quarts of water (I couldn’t get any more in the pot), and switched it on low. I’m leaving it overnight. I’ll see how it is in the morning, but I took this pic of it before it started cooking.

Oh, and while I was doing that, I did something not connected with ham at all. I made some more bread.

I did get quite a bit of work done today as well,  in between, and I was looking after Kathy, who spent most of the day in bed with aches, pains, and general flu-like symptoms.

Tags: edisto delicacies, food, ham gumbo, home made food, home made soup, home-cooked ham, low country gumbo, pea and ham soup