Southern Maryland Stuffed Ham

Hill's Halfway House Stuffed Ham

Southern Maryland Stuffed Ham has been a family favorite for more than 200 years. Stuffed Ham is usually served cold

16-18 lb De-boned Corned Ham

4 lb kale
4 lb cabbage
1 bunch celery (stalks only)
1 medium onion
1 lb watercress (optional)

Chop all ingredients into tiny 1/2 to 1" pieces. You may use your blender but be careful not to puree' your ingredients. You want some consistency.

Bring a large pot of water to a rolling boil. Blanch ingredients.
Ingredients should stay in water no longer than 3 minutes.
Remove and drain.
Let your ingredients cool to room temperature.

Spices

4 tablespoons salt
4 tablespoons black pepper
3 tablespoons mustard seed
2 tablespoons celery seed

(Hot Stuff !! Amounts can vary according to taste)
3 teaspoon hot sauce
2 tablespoon crushed red pepper

In a large Bowl Mix spices into stuffing.

Stuffing your ham

Generously stuff the bone cavity of your ham with your stuffing.
Cut large X's around your ham and push stuffing in to these.
Tie the ends and mid section of ham with butchers twine.
Wrap ham in cheese cloth.

Cooking

In a large Pot, bring water to a rolling boil.
Carefully place ham into pot.
Simmer ham 15 min per pound.

It is important not to overcook your meat!

Cooling

Follow cooling instructions closely!

One thing to remember is when you are cooling food you need to do it quickly. This way your food isn't in that danger zone!

When you have completely cooked your ham remove from Pot.
Place Ham directly into an ice bath. (enough ice and water to cover entire ham)
Add Ice frequently! Complete Cooling should take no longer than 2 hours.
When ham has cooled place into refrigerator immediately.

Slice Stuffed Ham and arrange on platter.

Apple Butter in a Crock Pot

Apple Butter in the Crock Pot

Makes about 3 or 4 pints

Note on the quantities:  This is 1x the recipe.  I recommend doing at least 2x in a large crockpot, or more if you have more crockpots.  It takes a LONG time to make, and it's easier to process more at one time, than to plan to do another batch later on.

Ingredients:
5 ½ lbs apples (about 10 large) – peeled, cored & finely chopped (OR: 7 cups prepared homemade applesauce) – good to use a mixture of apple types

3 cups white sugar

2 ½ tsp ground cinnamon

½ tsp ground cloves

½ tsp ground nutmeg

½ tsp ground ginger

½ tsp ground allspice

¼ tsp salt

1 cup fresh apple cider

¼ cup fresh lemon juice

Note on the apples:

5 1/2 lbs apples is about 7 cups of applesauce.  See the websites below for more information

Directions:

• Place the apples in a slow cooker.   
• In a medium bowl, mix the sugar and spices.  Pour the mixture over the apples in the slow cooker and mix well.
• Cover and cook on high for 1 hour.  It should be bubbling vigorously.
• Reduce the cooker heat to low.   
• With the lid set slightly ajar, continue cooking until apple butter is dark brown and thickened, usually about 7-10 hours longer.  You should be able to scoop a spoonful out and the apple butter stays on top without sliding out of the mound.
• Uncover, and continue cooking on low 1 hour. 
• If you used fresh apples, pass through a foodmill or strainer to remove lumps.  If you used homemade applesauce, use a whisk to increase smoothness.
• Spoon into sterile containers and refrigerate, freeze, or process in a canning method.

Applesauce & Apples Equivalents:
Need applesauce and apple equivalents?
Check here:
http://homecooking.about.com/od/foodequivalents/a/appleequiv.htm
http://www.straightriverfarm.com/apples.html

Yields:
1/2 peck of apples (5-6 lb.) makes 5 pints of applesauce
4 lbs fresh apples ~ 4-5 cups applesauce
5 1/5 lbs of fresh apples ~ 7 cups applesauce


Information about canning apples (all types of processes):
http://umaine.edu/publications/4035e/

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Furlough Friday Reflections

Furlough Friday Reflections:  After a week of furloughs for many, I just kept being reminded about tough times in our past, where we wondered just how in the heck we would be able to pay any of our bills.  Like, when I lost my job just before the summer in 1995...and Mike was a full time student, so we had NO income.  Or the next year, when I left my job working for legitimate reasons, and was again unemployed for the summer.  Or, when we decided I'd be a stay-at-home mom for our new precious baby, and we just made worthwhile adjustments to our lifestyle...and ended up moving a few years later and when trying to sell our beautiful and awesome NM home, found ourselves selling at the LOWEST time for house sales in the past 2 decades.  So much for a down payment on a new home, and "flush" to all the extra principal we paid for many years.  Sigh.

Sure, there were other times, but we learned to make adjustments and survive, and became closer in the process.  So here we are now, not in "regular jobs" but happy with the flexibility of our alternative jobs, where we can work at different times of the days and weeks.  More than anything, we are no longer frightened when adversity comes our way, if it ever dares to again, because we lived through several tough times, and we can still laugh about it.  It's such a sense of freedom to understand and realize that you do NOT have to fear losing a job, no matter how short of a time (like a furlough), because there are always other choices and options.  Always!

What did I do those summers of unanticipated time off with no income?  Unemployment surely does not pay much, so that wasn't the fun part.  We went camping, canned applesauce, bought the book "What's the Color of My Parachute" (good book for ideas), tried out new recipes, and more than anything, paid attention to what we "thought" worked before and realized that things were not always optimal.  Sure, sometimes we end up in jobs that are frustrating, bosses that are jerks, but that's where we spend MOST of our waking hours for M-F.  At my jobs, I spent more than that, as it was IT work, and salary.  Mind you, I was a woman working in the IT field, so it didn't pay like you'd have imagined, certainly not equal to that of my peers in the industry, not in NM.  I learned to be more truthful to myself and others when applying for jobs.  When asked by my next employer, where I stayed for 5 years until we moved to CA, why I had quit my last job, I told him the truth:  we just had different working styles, and I didn't fit his idea of an IT person working for an engineer who didn't know about how IT worked.  No offense to him, but it just didn't work well together.

The main point I think about when watching and hearing folks talk about the furloughs, is that there is always a silver lining, and Mike and I were so much happier when we found it, and we ended up better for it in the end.

So, after spending almost a decade as a stay-at-home mom, where I did alternative jobs or part time jobs such as substitute teaching, home hospital teaching, group home care for developmentally disabled (that was the hardest job of all, for the least amount of pay...hug those folks when you meet them!!!) -- well, it was not appealing to go back to a 9-5 job where I no longer fit and had no desire to spend my days.  We did do some surprising projects, such as making or helping to make, literally, thousands of tie dye shirts over the past 3 years, and we have a few more things up our sleeves for the upcoming future that we both feel will make all the tough and lean times more appreciated for all of the unexpected benefits they gave us.  We will continue to teach at the college, as teaching makes us happy.

We'll have more yard sales, which often don't reap that much in the cash benefits, but does wonders for clearing out things that no longer fit in our home or lives.  Combined yard sales make it more fun, and shares the opportunity at an ideal location -- what a deal!  In the past 10 years, we have downsized the extra "fluff" stuff we owned by at least HALF (woo hoo!!), and I only miss one thing we let go.  Sure, Mike has a growing collection of lawn mowers at the moment, but so what?!  They are easy to pass to the next person.  It makes him happy, and he deserves at least that, because he has never complained about the space my hobbies take up for all of the past 20+ years.  I don't even want to say how much space that is, because those hobbies are what help keep my head happy and balanced.  Sewing, beading, making jewelry, and whatever other projects that come up...they are truly mental health therapy for me.  I no longer go to the bead store and spend about $100 per visit on the beautiful beads, but I do play smarter and have made beautiful projects with the beads purchased in the more lucrative years.

So, I will end this as I need to finish grading papers, and go clean out my kitchen of extra stuff we're not using, then move on to 2 other rooms. Set up for the yard sale tomorrow.  Do some laundry.  Finish grading some homework.  And then soak and tie t-shirts for an entire kindergarten class that we're helping to dye on Sunday.  Crazy, busy, that's this week, but then some down time next week, and lots of good company and laughs in all of the above.

Y'all enjoy that furlough for as long as it lasts, and hope you can find the "other" things to do that you never have time for when you're working the 9-5 jobs.  Carry on!

Tobacco Sticks

This one earns a space of its own: In response to a friends question about "What are tobacco sticks?" (picture borrowed from google image search, but looks like some of our older piles after years of non-use)

Tobacco sticks start out as square cut "sticks" that are approx 1 1/4" square and 4 1/2 ft tall poles that have a semi-point cut out of the top. The top "point" is designed to wear a metal spear when the tobacco stalks are, literally, speared onto the stick. Tobacco grows to about 4-5' tall, and when cut near the base, they are then speared onto the tobacco sticks and hung across wooden poles in a tobacco barn to dry and cure. Months later, when cured, the stalks are removed from the tobacco stick, and the stick goes back into a nice, neat pile, to sit there until the next year. Physically, that's a good description of tobacco sticks. But, oddly enough, that is not the whole story.

We never liked the new sticks...too many splinters. Hated the "old" sticks, for they were twisted and gnarly, hard to carry when full of tobacco stalks, and really hard to spear without splitting the tobacco stalks. Yes, we had our favorite types of sticks. They had rounded tops, but not too rounded, or the spears did not stay on them right. If we were irritated with someone, or sometimes just for fun, we tried to put the "bad" sticks in their pile of waiting sticks to use next. The easier the spears fit the perfect sticks, the easier it was to do our summer, manual labor on the farm. Easier was always better, because everything was a race. We raced to see who could get their side of the trailer done first. We raced to see who speared the best, who cut the rows of stalks down faster, who could walk faster, who could run faster, who gave who The Word, and the list never ends. Sometimes we used the sticks as writing tools, to make art or messages in the dirt.  What farm kids did.

But the tobacco sticks are a dying breed. There are no more fields in Maryland (or very few?) and the sticks are finding new homes. They become art in some homes, sometimes clever and cute, sometimes just stupid looking non-art. I have a few from my grandparent's farm, that I asked Grandma if I could have. Even if I never use them, they remind me of the fond memories of the farm. Not of the tobacco parts, but of the camaraderie, the fresh apples and watermelons, and family barbeques.

Now, there are tobacco sticks available for sale on Ebay for $1 each or 5 for $14.99 and postage. A friend is going to sell some at the community yard sale at our place, because she just came into a barn with a pile of them. Whatever ones are not removed from the barn "will be burned up!" Who in the hell burns up tobacco sticks? They are not just sticks, they are not just about the tobacco. Quite frankly, I hate tobacco. Hate smoking, the smell, the nasty, dirty stains we all endured as kids, stains that tasted bitter and horrid (while trying to eat watermelon). BUT, it is a travesty to burn up tobacco sticks. They represent a lifestyle and a culture, a dying breed, but not deserving of being burned up. Let people take them for free, before burning them up! They can be used in gardens, as stakes, for decoration, for tee-pees for the little kids, to make a fence, and the ideas are endless. I hope our friends are able to retrieve all of these sticks, because the owner is adamant that no one else is allowed on the property to help them relocate the sticks. Must be the kids of the previous farmers, or perhaps a new owner of an old farm, with no appreciation of a culture that so many of us participated in, and "came from". Perhaps more than any other tool or item on a working farm, the tobacco sticks are symbols of so much more than they appear to the untrained or unknowing eye. As the day went on, after hearing earlier that this guy was just going to "burn them up with the barn, they WILL get burned up if we don't remove them" I was surprised at just how much it just rubbed me the wrong way. Stupid people, only thinking of destroying history with no regard to how they can pass on some of the county history to others who may be more appreciative.

This is not a soap box. Just the truth.
Tobacco sticks.