Hamming it up

Last night, we decided to make breakfast for dinner. It is one of those silly little delights that we enjoy on occasion. What started it was finding an American brand bag of self-rising flour in the grocery and the fact that I haven't made pancakes from scratch in almost a year.

We then decided we needed something else to go along with it. That something wound up being some country ham that I bought from a German deli not too far from our house. Now this deli has a lot of interesting things in it and you can call them up, order, and they will deliver to your door. Is that sweet or what?

I had visited their store and bought an assortment of things which have all been pretty yummy. Last night I uncovered a package of frozen country ham. We opened it and discovered it was very thinly sliced ham. A little odd, but we let it go. We slapped some of the pieces on the griddle and heated it up. It smelled pretty good and it made a welcome addition to our dinner menu.

The sweet smell of pancakes filled the kitchen along with the slightly salty smell of the ham. Hot diggity!

Sweetums and I sat down at the table, slathered some butter on the hot pancakes and drenched them in syrup. We divided up the slices of ham and the forks were flying. The pancakes were excellent and then we both tried the country ham. Well, it was a bit of a disappointment. It smelled good while cooking, but didn't really taste like much of anything. In my book, country ham has some very specific criteria to meet or it just isn't country ham. I guess it just depends on which country you are in.

If the producer of this ham wants to really get with the program, they need to talk to some of the fine people on the eastern side of the US about how to make REAL country ham. Otherwise they need to put a different label on there and call it salty smelling, bland tasting white meat made from pigs not to be confused with country ham.

This all reminds me of an incident way, way back in my life, that could not happen today due to current flying regulations.

One of my brothers had moved from North Carolina to Texas and was missing certain things that were not offered there. Things like Duke's mayonnaise, Squirt, and country ham from a place that makes some of the best country ham in the world.

Anyway, after I moved to Texas too and was on a visit back to the mother-land, I was commanded to return with packages of the "other white meat" that brother number two had purchased for the deprived brother number one. Seemed pretty straight forward as many things do on the surface.

How full of mischief could a dozen plus slick plastic packages of ham be?

To set the scene, just imagine that I had a wild strawberry colored Samsonite over-night shoulder bag. Yep, imagine that! It seemed like the perfect vehicle to transport the requested items. No laughing at the luggage. It was hot stuff back in the 70's. It was probably even considered "sassy."

I stuffed as many of the sealed packages in the side pockets but had to stuff a few packages inside the bag along with my own personal items. Once at the airport, I had to put the bag on a conveyor belt to go though the X-ray machine where it promptly fell on it's side and the ham packets began to slide, no, squirt is more accurate, out. My bag was oozing ham. I was trying to catch it and stick it back in my sassy wild strawberry colored bag as it made it's way along. It came out the other side with ham packets still scooting all over the place. The security people all found this amusing. I was saying bad words and trying to make the ham behave and stay put. I also did not say nice things about my brother while this was happening.

I guess this all links together in some convoluted way in my head. Country ham has to be the real deal to me or it just leaves you unsatisfied. Pigs may be very smart, but country ham has a mind of its own. People miss the common place things that they don't have even when they move within the confines of their own country (even if Texans consider Texas a whole other country). Comfort food comes in many forms or certain foods seem comforting when eaten in certain situations. And, I seem to have a long standing history of not getting along very well with plastic (please see previous posts).

Therefore, take comfort my friends in the little things; for you never know when they might be hard to come by.