Holiday Ham

My sister Kelli gave us a ham for Christmas. We were a little apprehensive about receiving it because neither of us is very experienced at meat cooking, but we scoured the internet and found a recipe that looked easy and we already had all the ingredients for. Andrew made cinnamon-clove-pineapple ham all by himself. It was very good. It's still very good. We will be having ham for the next little while. Last night I made ham stir-fry with couscous. We're due to have pasta today so perhaps we can find a creative way to use more ham.

We won't get too creative though. Hopefully enough time has passed that Kelli won't find this story embarrassing. It happened a few years ago--either when I was still in high school or soon after graduation. I can't remember quite...it was definitely before the twins were born and I think it was before I went to Russia...

She invited our family and my grandparents to her house for a Christmas dinner. She had made pineapple ham and the meal was delicious. We visited for a while and then she brought out dessert.

It was a lovely looking cake with vanilla frosting. Upon further investigation I discovered that it was pineapple upside down cake. Yum! I took a big forkful, put it in my mouth, and started chewing. I looked up at my mom. We gave exchanged a quizzical look.

The cake tasted different somehow.

I hesitated before taking another bite. When I put that second mouthful in, I chewed it very slowly and carefully, trying to figure out what was different. I just couldn't put my finger on it.

I politely finished my piece. Kelli asked,

"How'd you like it?"

"It was...good," I lied.

"Do you want another piece?" she asked.

"Ummm...no," I said honestly and then quickly added, "I'm stuffed."

I sat there with a strange aftertaste in my mouth wondering what she had done to the cake. No one took seconds but Kelli didn't seem to mind.

As the evening unfolded and the grandkids started opening presents, Kelli explained her ingenious idea to make an inexpensive pineapple upside down cake.

She had reused the pineapple she had cooked the ham with to make the cake!

Don't worry. Andrew and I just ate the pineapple with the ham. No cake was involved this year.