Sherdie

I love Christmas ham. There’s something about it, hanging out in the fridge, wrapped in a vinegary cloth, just waiting for me to take a sneaky slice. It’s like Easter egg chocolate – my brain knows there’s no difference between it and normal chocolate, but my mouth begs to differ.

But every year, I either baulk at the price, or can’t quite justify such a large amount of smoked meat for such a small amount of eating. And somehow, every year, I end up with some ham. Via relatives, or the Architect’s family, or leftover from somewhere else. Lucky Christmas ham.

But this year! This year was the Christmas ham to end all hams.

See, our lovely neighbour Yuki works at a place that sells food. As a Christmas bonus (maybe?) they gave her a giant ham. The night before she went overseas for two weeks. And her partner’s a vegetarian. Um. Awkward.

So we very, very kindly agreed to take it off their hands. Aren’t we nice? I would be chuffed to have neighbours as nice as us. (Thanks Yuki and Linz!)

A WHOLE HAM. Just for me.* I can eat whichever bits I want. No trying to sneak bits of the delicious skin to chew on without my dad noticing and telling me off. No polite “oh just a couple of slices”, no limit on the amount of ham sandwiches, ham on toast, ham mixed with rice, ham omelettes, ham as a snack. Holy ham hocks, Batman, it’s beginning to feel a lot like Christmas (ham)!

An hour or so of carving and slicing later, I’ve reduced the giant ham into various slices, chunks and shredded bits, as well as a giant bone for stock-making, skin ready to become crackling and fat for rendering. And a fair bit of taste testing as I went. A few neat packages are stashed in the freezer, but there’s plenty in the fridge (wrapped in a vinegary teatowel) for toasted ham sandwiches all week. A third or so of the bounty (the nicest looking slices… I have yet to learn how to properly carve a joint of meat…) will of course go back to Yuki. Tomorrow I’ll make stock and render the fat. I’m thinking about how ham would go in gyoza.

It’s all very Pioneer Woman around here right now.

And I like it.

Must be a Christmas miracle.

Merry Christmas ham to everyone.

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* And the Architect, I suppose. But mostly me.