hamming it up

I made a Charles Dickens visit to Hawaii last week.

You know. "It was the best of times; it was the worst of times."

I had just paid for my bag of produce and some exotic imported items when I asked Alex if he had sold any Costco hams over the Christmas season. I was primarily curious because I had not seen any in his coolers before I headed north the Oregon to celebrate Omnisolemnis. I did not particularly need any on that stop.

He called to one of his employees who hauled out a red foil-wrapped ham the size of Rhode Island. I immediately recognized it by the wrapper. It was one of Costco's spiral-cut smoked hams that are the centerpiece of holiday stand-up parties. A slice of ham on a kaiser roll slathered with extra hot mustard, and a party-goer will be content for the evening.

My problem is that I was not cooking a Christmas dinner or hosting a stand-up party. Such events do not happen at the house with no name. I would like to, but I don't. Or, as Florence King would put it: "I would love to. I just don't want to."

Even though my head said "what are you going to do with that hunk of meat," my heart responded "whatever I want to," and I left with the ham slung over my shoulder looking as if I worked in a Smithfield packing house. Even Upton Sinclair would have given me a pass in The Jungle.

One of the drawbacks of decisions based on emotion is that the passion soon fades and reality sets in. In this case, the realityt was a bone-in giant that hunkered in the corner of my refrigerator daring me to come up with enough uses to justify the cost of the purchase.

So, for the past week, I have eaten ham fried rice, ham sandwiches, ham with mustard, ham with scrambled eggs, a ham-cheese-egg breakfast sandwich, and a couple of other dishes I cannot now remember. All of them were delicious because I like ham. And this ham has given up itself to my pleasure like an Al Capp shmoo.

But I have just about hit the ham wall, and about half remains uneaten. One obvious solution is to pull the rest of the spirals off of the bone, wrap them individually in plastic wrap, and then freeze them. That is always a last resort with me. The freezing process will destroy a lot of the ham's flavor. 

There are other options, of course, that I do not need to elaborate on. But I am certain I could find good homes for what is left of the ham.

I suppose the moral here is not to buy more of anything than I can reasonably use in a few days. (Of course, that would be contrary to the very concept of my pantry.) That is not going to happen.

A better moral is that when faced with an excess of anything, I should ask where could it best be put to use?

Before I answer that question, though, I see a grilled cheese sandwich with smoked ham in my future.