Good Eats
Once upon a time, we bought a honey baked ham. We ate the ham and cooked the bone in Navy Beans. It was delicious. Flash forward, lord knows how many years, to 2022. We ate a spiral cut ham at the home of my daughter and her husband for Christmas. I brought home the bone. Cooked it with Navy Beans. It wasn’t the same. It was a good recipe, but it needed that brown sugar. I’m going to buy a ham hock and try again.
I also experimented this weekend with frying a hamburger. On burger A, I seasoned the meat, patted it flat and watched it fry up and shrink into what was basically a lump of fried meat. I consulted an expert. On burger B, I patted it flat, turned down the heat, and sat a small pan on top of it with a weight inside. It cooked up nice and flat. It was dry because I cooked it too long. I will shorten the time for burger C, and see if I can get it flat and juicy. I’ll also look for a tool specific to smashing a burger flat, preferably cast iron.
And that’s it for my cooking adventure’s this week. I have to eat, and I might as well have fun. I still have some of those beans left. That’s the beauty of beans and a crock pot. I have a really good pinto bean recipe. I’ve cooked it seven or eight times. How do I know? I write down dates when I cook it and make notes as to what I changed on the recipe. And writing this puts me in the mood for meatloaf, and I have no idea why except that I think the key to a good meatloaf sandwich might be Miracle Whip and I’m itching to try it.
John W. Wilson is the author of The Long Goodbye: A Caregiver's Tale