The $8 Ham

The $8 Ham Heading through the grocery store a few weeks ago there it was, the non-passable deal, large hams for only $1/lb. Hmmmm, says my mind, always nice to have a ham on hand, never know when you might want it for company, and besides, there's so many things you can do with leftover ham..... So into the cart, the car, the freezer it went. On Saturday I decided that the ham would make a good Sunday supper so I set it out to thaw. I consulted my 47 year old, as old as my marriage, Fanny Farmer cookbook for bake times and discovered there's lots of different hams, some cooked, some not, tried to figure out what I had - it simply said smoked picnic ham on the label. Finally I decided that a couple of hours bake time should do it - that is until I flipped it over and read the cooking instructions on the label. Instructions said stove top, cover with water, bring to a boil, lower heat and simmer for 4 or 5 hours until a meat thermometer read 170F. "BOIL! Get real, nobody boils a ham," says my husband, the man who's cooked maybe 50 meals out of 47 years. "It's smoked isn't it? That means it's pre-cooked." "It seems to me," says I, "that if it says boil on the package that that is how it should be cooked. If baking was an option surely it would also be on the label. This ham must not be pre-cooked." This circular conversation went on all morning until I just said to hell with it, it says boil, I'll boil. Luckily I had a pot large enough to cover it with water. It took nearly 45 minutes just to start to boil before I could turn it down to simmer! A friend we had invited arrived around 4:00, said he'd never heard of boiling a ham either, so the conversation renewed once again. At 6:00, amazingly in sinc with the potatoes, the thermometer said ready. The ham was delicious! The meal a resounding success. (Insert smirking smiley face here.) The $8 ham provided my husband and I two more suppers and three breakfasts. The fat we put away for the dogs, but the resulting ham stock, lots of it, stared back at us and almost dared us to throw it away. All that good soup stock, hesitate, hesitate. Go on, do it! You can't save everything! Well, we did save it. 22 cups went into bean soup, the rest got poured over the dog's supper for the next few days. The bean soup recipe came from the internet. 3 lbs of dried white beans, 1 1/2 lbs of carrots, onions, garlic, herbs, spices, and of course the ham stock and some ham. It took all Monday morning to make, all day to cook slowly on the wood stove. We had a bowl of it Tuesday for lunch and I canned the rest - 7 quarts, 10 lbs pressure, 50 minutes. Value per quart? Well, you can never put a true dollar value on home-made soups, can you? So, value? Priceless.