The Pork Diaries: Ham on

Our first sampling of ham - from the pig, "Pork Chop."

At last, the ham.

A few weeks back, when we went to pick up the bacon (I posted this, readers, a few weeks back), we also got the hams.  They were both quite large, too big for any of our freezers, so I decided to bust mine down into parts.

Getting started breaking down the ham.
The knife blade is 8 inches long, for perspective.

I’ve got some photos here of the progress on that.  I think we ended up with two or three of these nice half-moon shaped ones that range from 2 to 4 pounds each.  There are also two oddly shaped ones of similar weight, and then there is still one that size attached to the ham bone. 

Here are a couple of hunks of the
broken-down ham.

When David sent them off to the smokehouse, he told me that they weighed the four hams (two from his hog and two from mine) and the average weight was 36 pounds.  He had the bigger animal and I am sure the heavier hams, but that puts the two from “Pork Chop” in at probably between 25 and 30 pounds.  That’s a lot of meat, no matter how you slice it.

Mary decided that she would take out one of the hams for dinner last weekend.  She picked one of the smaller half-moons, and prepped it as follows:  after scoring it, she basted it with orange juice and put cloves in the cross-hatch.  As it cooked the scent filled the air, driving Tessie, and our visiting 110-pound Golden Retriever Tobey, crazy as their dinner times approach. 

Mary paired the ham with kale and sweet potatoes using some standard recipes from around our household.

It made for a great weekend feast – and guess what?  There is plenty of ham left over!