Simple Cooking

Tigger had a cooking lesson yesterday. She learned how to prepare a ham the same way that my mother taught me. She learned to trim the skin off and score the meat. I was out of whole cloves which surprised me; I then remembered grinding them up for a recipe and leaving them in the "whole" jar. We glaze our ham with an easy to make glaze. Take about a half of your smallest size mixing bowl about a cup, of dark brown sugar, add about a 1/2 c each of dark brown mustard and ketchup. Mix this with a fork until it's blended well. Baste the ham with it. If you score the ham it's very pretty to put a whole clove in each square. I baste the ham several times while baking and love this glaze. I usually buy a half a butt with the bone in. The bone makes the meat good and it's also great for making other dishes, beans or split pea soup later on. You can make a lot of meals out of a ham. It really isn't worth the price difference of nearly a dollar a pound to get the spiral cut and glaze. You got a knife, you can cut a ham. Another easy glaze that is good is just plain apricot jam right out of the jar.









Next we decided to make scalloped potatoes. You can watch Tigger learn this we got the camera out. Start by filling a sauce pot with milk and put on low heat to scald. Then scrub your russet potatoes clean. I don't see any reason to peel them the skins are good. Having a food processor is great for this because part of making scalloped potatoes is having the slices be the same size. I remember how much work this took my maother and I to do all of this by hand and we peeled the potatoes. My mom peeled with a paring knife and I used the peeler. I felt so grown up when I learned to use a paring knife too. Scalloped potatoes are easy to make, kind of time consuming but still they are simple. Place a layer of sliced potatoe sin the bottom of a deep baking dish. Then sprinkle with flour. Salt and pepper then add apply pats of butter. Repeat this until your dish is slightly more than half full. Pour the scaled milk over everything until almost covered but not. Au gratin potoatoes are made the same way but add grated cheddar cheese. I love sliced onion rings in each layer but my family does not like onions. They are crazy. cover the dish with aluminum foil and bake for one hour covered and an additional half hour uncovered. make sure the pototatoes are soft. Sometimes it can take two hours. 400 degrees is the best but 350 will work.

Tigger had a guffaw belly laughing fit when I told her we would fix a dump cake for dessert. "DUMP CAKE!" she hollered. She almost fell out she was crackin up. Get out another oblong baking dish and pour a large can of sliced peaches into it with the syrup. Add a can of cherry pie filling. sprinkle the top with a pakage of butter cake mix and finely chopped walnuts. Either drizzle a melted stick of butter over the top or apply pats of butter, either way. you can use any knd of pie filling blueberry is good too. Bake for about 40 mins until golden brown. Everything fits in the oven together. Tigger wasn't laughing when we finished this, she was drooling.

There you go a feast for a king! With all the meals that can be made from this hunk of pork hiney paying $17. for a piece of meat is actually a good deal. We are going to have a lot to eat from 12 pounds of piggy.