The Best Ham Glaze I Ever Invented

     I have to apologize from the start, I didn't even get a good picture of the ham after I was done cooking it with the glaze, I run a cooking blog, I should really know better but sometimes I just get caught in the moment.

Hashed Leftovers

     Many times after the holidays we're left with mounds of leftovers from an overindulgent feast of Brobdingnagian proportions and we're completely flummoxed as to what to do with them.  I didn't even cook this much for Christmas but I did have a rather large turkey and now I'm left to decide what to do with the leftovers.  Part of it is getting mixed up into turkey salad using the Chicken Salad Recipe but with the rest I'm left to get creative.

Oven Roasted Pork Shoulder

     Roasted pork has been around ever since we started killing wild boars in the forest in the dim beginnings of humanity so in that sense this is a "vintage" recipe but for our purposes here this recipe is all my own.  It is based on a Filipino recipe called Lechon sa Hurno which translates into "roasted in the oven".  It's a home based version of the popular party centerpiece Lechon Baboy or roasted pig where a whole pig is gutted and roasted for hours on a spit over an open fire.

Hungarian Pork With Sauerkraut

Eastern European countries have many ways to cook cabbage and pork.  My Polish/Russian grandparents cooked a dish called Kapusta that was a mixture of pork, cabbage and sauerkraut.  This dish being the Hungarian equivalent, it has some differences though.  The addition of tomatoes gives it a sweet kick to counter the vinegar taste of the sauerkraut and all is brought together with the ever present sour cream at the end.  This dish is more of a stew than a main dish and is best served in a nice wide bowl.  Leftovers can be frozen.  For the pork, get a cheap cut of meat like a picnic ham.  Use only the meaty part reserving the fat for use in another recipe.  Properly speaking, this dish is a Szekler recipe which originated with the Szekely people who live in the Carpathian Mountains of Transylvania.  My family descends from this group with Tamasi's being mentioned in various codexes from the 1300's as "Counts of the Szeklers" and having fought hard against the constant Turkish invasions.  The origins of the Szeklers are unclear and it is thought they are descendants of the Avars who settled in that area in late Roman times and were used as a border control by the later Byzantine Empire.  When the Magyars came later and settled Hungary the Szeklers continued their border control responsibilities. This recipe is from the New Brunswick Orthodox Church Cookbook printed in 1958.

Baked BBQ Pork Chops & Fried Apples

This is an easy recipe to do for dinner one night.  Make up the BBQ sauce and just store it in the fridge and you'll have it around whenever you need it.  The sauce is a take on Carolina Low-Country Sauce and being such is much thinner than the thick sauces sold in the store.  Store bought sauces, in addition to being full of chemical garbage, are finishing sauces, not meant to be cooked with as they turn into chewey goop.  This sauce will thicken a bit while cooking in the oven and after separating the fat can be used as a garnish for the chops.