As I mentioned before, this is our first holiday celebration that we're hosting at our house. B refuses to eat anything other than ham at Christmas, so that quickly became the plan. Then we were lucky enough to catch "Good Eats: Ham" on the Food Network. (In case you're not familiar with the show, it's more than a cooking show... more like cooking science, cooking education, and the dos and don'ts of cooking surrounding a particular food). Anyway, Alton Brown showed us that the little oval hams you're used to seeing at the table are little more than processed "ham food" and have very little real ham and quite a bit of "other stuff." What you're supposed to get is the real ham, with the bone in, in a shape that doesn't resemble a meat processor. See picture.Fast forward to last night at Wegmans. I'm at the seafood counter buying salmon for Wednesday night's dinner and I turn around... hams as far as the eye can see! I see the little "ham food" kind and then at the end I see the bigger, bone-in, gold foil wrapped ham. Perfect... this looks good... whoa.... what?!!!? That has to be a misprint!!! FIFTY DOLLARS!!! The hams are FIFTY DOLLARS??!!?? Well, I think to myself, clearly I must be stronger than I think, and clearly this must be a forty pound ham, right? No. Eight pounds. It was an eight pound ham.... for fifty dollars. Welcome to the grown-up world of holiday entertaining.
5 comments:
trust me. i've been there for first year sticker shock when it comes to holiday entertaining. last year, we had M's whole family in for the weekend before Christmas...that's when we did the ham and all the fixin's. then i made turkey for actual christmas day. our grocery bill for those two meals was equal to two normal weeks of grocery shopping. it sucks to be a grown-up sometimes. sometimes. other times, you realize that it's worth it to know that you can make all the foods you love!!
I hear you! I just called to inquire about ordering that prime rib for Christmas Dinner... they want $19.99--per pound. In Texas, the land of beef! We are reevaluating our need for beef and are also looking elsewhere! The cost factor is a definite downer, but being in your home and having control of what you serve and when is kind of nice. Take it from someone who has been served cilantro flat pancakes for breakfast by a certain FIL. Ask feathernester about that one. We sat and hoarded her pumpkin loaf that was supposed to be a gift in our bedrooms so that we didn't starve!
So, this is why you should be happy if you receive a Christmas ham as a gift in the mail. No really. (It IS a lot of money). Typically, the D family just does a Thanksgiving dinner reprise on Christmas, and everyone wins :)
I'm sure your meal with be divine!
I have so been there with sticker shock. The best ham is the spirial cut from georga, ssold at the HAM Store all over the south. love mom
Is ham a magical meat that I didn't realize had special properties? Are these prize-winning, blue-ribbon pigs that a Pope has blessed?
Wow, I never loved ham and now I feel glad that I don't, if only for my wallet's sake.
I think I'll stick to the other alternatives, thanks.
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