Temple of Porcine Love

The Swinery

John takes his daily afternoon walk past this little West Seattle artisan butcher store.  I don't shop at The Swinery, but I did buy some pretty good bratwurst there once, so I asked him to drop in and see if they had any small hams for our Christmas dinner.

"Yes," the girl at the counter said, "some just came in and ham is going fast." So he ran back home for money and a shopping bag.

It's a good thing he took a big shopping bag and plenty of money, because she underestimated size and he lugged home this 17 pound piece of smoked piggy. The label doesn't say much, just smoked ham. Actually minimal ingredients and lack of nutritional information is kind of refreshing these days. Hey, it's a HAM. It came from a place called Carlton Farms in Oregon.  Well, that should do us for Christmas dinner and leftovers into 2015.

Last week we watched smarty-pants Martha Stewart bake an enormous ham, and I found her recipe on the Internet.   It's more of a technique really, since there aren't any complex ingredients needed to heat up a fully cooked ham.

Being Martha, she scored the top with mathematical precision and whipped up a nice glaze with maple syrup, Dijon mustard, champagne vinegar and apricot jam.   Her buffet ham was beautiful of course, with wonderful sweet, fatty, crispy, brown bits on top just begging to be pinched off.

Well, Martha Stewart sets a high bar.  If I'm not too frazzled by dinnertime on Christmas, I'll remember to take a picture of ours.