Congratulations, It's a Ham

Lacking all originality, I made a ham for the holiday (Christmas for the kids, non-denominational winter celebration for me) and, of course, I'm quite pleased with how it turned out.

I took a nice small city ham, hand-sliced the criss-crosses all around its flesh, put it in a pan tented with foil and baked it at 250 for two hours. Then I took off the foil and peeled off all of the rind (not all that difficult if you cut the criss-crosses in). After that, brushed on some dijon mustard, patted on dark brown sugar, and sprayed it all down with Dr. Pepper. Normally, the doctor would be followed by either breadcrumbs or crumbed ginger snap cookies, but I actually forgot to buy either of them and nothing was open Christmas Day...

Then the whole thing went back in at 350 for another hour to ninety minutes and came out a beautiful, moist and tasty dish.

As for the materialistic end of the holiday, I was happy that we were able to pull off more gift buying for the kids than I'd anticipated. Lash and Aeia were really cool and positive with the prospect of not getting much, which made it happier for me to end up giving them more. Aeia wanted, and got, these fuzzy pink boots that are to die for. She and Lash have spent the past three days doing little else than playing with legos, pirates and green army men.

Denise and I spent the day (from nine to nine thirty or so) watching the extended Lord of the Rings in its entirety. Those extended versions add so much more richness to the films. I love them.

I also want to publicly thank a friend of mine who, despite bad money problems of his own right now, went out of his way to get me a copy of the third Invincible trade paperback and get it signed by the writer. Thanks, buddy.

I need to buy stamps and send thank-you cards.