Christmas Breakfast is Coming

Christmas is almost here and I will be continuing a tradition that I learned many years ago from my father.

Fried ham, home fried potatoes with onions and eggs poached in ham milk gravy. This is a great breakfast and I would encourage all to try it.

My father is gone now. He passed on Christmas Day in 2009 but this is one of the many things I will never forget.

You need to start out with a ham that has been very well brined and heavily smoked. You slice however much you will need to feed everyone that will be at the table and you get a pan that can be used for making gravy (no nonstick).

The pan gets set to medium high heat and once at temperature you put a liberal amount of butter in the pan plus just a touch of oil to help raise the smoke point of the butter. you lay the ham slices in and proceed to fry them until they are very well browned. Do not worry about things sticking to the pan. You need those wonderful brown and burned bits.

Once the ham has been completed you leave the pan on and deglaze it with milk. Enough milk that you can poach eggs in. Stir it around and make sure you get all those wonderful bits off the bottom. Once the milk has taken on all the flavoring you then proceed to crack eggs into the milk mixture and use a spoon to make sure you ladle the mixture over the top of the eggs to get them poached properly.

In another pan you have been frying potatoes with onions to a fairly brown and crisp consistency. When plated you will have a nice slab of browned ham, 2-3 poached eggs and a pile of home fried potatoes along with whatever kind of toast you prefer.

I don’t know exactly when this started. I remember it as far back as I can remember and we have been having that every Christmas. I only make this once a year but this is my favorite holiday meal.

Enjoy!!

Technorati Tags: Christmas,Traditions,Breakfast

Thanksgiving the Day After

Thanksgiving has come and gone yet again with enormous quantities of amazing food made all over the country. I truly feel bad for those that were required to work on Thanksgiving. There are those that are needed even on holidays. Police, First Responders, Medical Personnel all are all needed no matter the day of the year.

For those of you that had to work at large department and grocery stores I am sorry. There really was no need. Look at what happens, at least where I live, whenever it snows. All we need is a hint of snow and the grocery store shelves are empty in hours which proves that we can damn well get what we need ahead of time.

That being said, thank you so much to all those that were forced to work whether in a critical function or not. Your efforts do not go unappreciated. At least by me.

Technorati Tags: Working on a Holiday,Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving!

What a wonderful day for the first post of a food blog. I will be blogging primarily about food that I have made at home along with the occasional trip out to eat when it is affordable.

I absolutely love to experiment in the kitchen and most people tell me I am an excellent cook. That being said I have certainly had a few spectacular disasters and I will have no problem posting about them as they happen.

For today my wife made a discovery in baking her pumpkin pies. There a little of the filling left over after the pies were filled so we just put it in a backing dish and made some pumpkin custard. When it was done she tasted it and seemed a bit disappointed and said it was a little too spicy. I tried it and found that she had put a good bit of extra clove in it. I believe the extra clove is actually awesome and unless you do not like clove I would certainly advise trying a bit extra in your pie.

My wife and I have some differences of opinion on spices and seasoning. My wife is an absolutely wonderful cook and tends to stay very light with seasoning of any kind. I on the other hand have allergies and sometimes am not able to smell very well and smell is a big part of eating and of your tasting so when I can not smell I tend to go very strong with spices and seasoning to compensate for the lack of smell and that tends be too overboard for her.

I completely respect her thoughts on food seasoning although I do not always agree with them so I do try to not go too terribly overboard but I do make things that she will not eat. I do not do it purposely but it does happen.

That all being said Happy Thanksgiving and enjoy the food and the day.

Technorati Tags: Food,Thanksgiving,Holiday Food