Have you ever wondered what to do with a leftover ham, especially through the Holidays?  If you’re like us and prefer to have ham on the table for Thanksgiving and Christmas as well as a turkey or roast beef (Or whatever your tradition happens to be), then this quick little throw together might be just what you’ve been looking for as a way to get a bit of new life out of some of your leftover holiday feast.

Almost everyone has a few boxes of mac-n-cheese stuffed somewhere in their pantries.  You may not use it regularly, but I’m sure its in there somewhere.  This recipe calls for two standard sized boxes, but hey, I’m not going to say you can’t make your own Mac and Cheese and make this up either.  It would surely be better, but I always have the boxed stuff, because my son doesn’t prefer homemade yet.

So with a few boxes of noodles, a bit of cheese leftover from an Antipasto platter that I made, a bag of frozen broccoli and a bit of this and that, you can have a beautiful comfort food meal on the table and go through some of those leftovers in the process.  Not a bad deal, is it?

And did I mention that this is freaking wonderful?  It really is.  We actually ate the leftovers of the leftover solution for lunch the next day…  Yup.  It’s that good.

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If you’re looking for a quick, simple pasta recipe that won’t let you down, this is the one you’ll want to keep handy. We used gemelli for this dish, but it would work equally well with rotini or any other full bodied pasta.  Gemelli just happens to be our recent new favorite, os we’re doing a lot of experimenting with it.

This particular recipe came about from the need to get something on the table quickly. my wife called and announced that she would be coming home for lunch on this particular day, even though she was supposed to be having a lunchtime meeting.  The result…  Well, in a word it was fabulous.  Or to quote Billy Crystal as Fernando, it was “Simply Maaaahhhvelous”.

This recipe is also my entry for the ninth edition of the Frugal Fridays food blog event, where myself and several other very talented people, including Ben, from What’s Cooking?  There are others working on the project with us, but I’m not at liberty to discuss them just yet.

The purpose of Frugal Fridays is for foodies or food bloggers to create a recipe that costs $10.00 US or less that will feed a family, and this recipe falls so squarely into that category that it really should be a crime.

But without further discussion or ado, I present to you…

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Turkey may be the star of the holiday table, but I would never dream of hosting a Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner without a ham as well. With both on the menu you satisfy everyone’s wants for a great holiday meal with both red meat and poultry, as long as you’ve got a good vegetarian dish somewhere in the mix, you’ve covered all the bases. Since these meals usually turn into a grazing frenzy later in the day, or at least they do when I host them, everyone gets to sample a little of everything before they’re done, and everyone leaves happy.

This year I picked up a spiral sliced ham by accident. I generally go for a full bone in shank, marinade it overnight in a combination of wine, onions, garlic and herbs and then cook it in an oven bag. It’s probably one of my most tried-and-true recipes to date. This year I didn’t have that option.

If you’ve ever cooked a spiral sliced ham, you’ll know that they don’t come out of the oven in a very attractive manner. (See images below.) The advantage they do have is the ability to soak up the glazes and sauces that they are cooked with, which enhances the flavor of the finished product immensely. Since pork and apple are the perfect combination, I chose to make a glaze from apples and Merlot. A choice that worked out incredibly well.

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Breakfast sandwiches are nothing new, but if you want to start your day off with a bit of a kick, I think I may just have something for you, and there’s not an egg in sight!

This quick and simple sammich can be adapted to suit a variety of tastes, and I find that two is just enough to get me up and running until lunch, though they could definitely be made for a snack at any time of day.

A breakfast sandwich without eggs? Yup. Because Mrs. seat of her Pants isn’t the biggest egg fan in the world, I’ve been trying out breakfast recipes that go sans-egg on myself while she’s at work. I’m not sure this is something she’d want just before teaching, but I know it got me going!

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Mine is one of the many American households where Ham is a staple at several holidays. I have slightly different methods for preparing this noble cut of meat, depending on the holiday in question.

For Easter, braising is my preferred method. No cloves will be found in my Easter ham, not that I’m against them, I’m not. I just prefer the first ham of the year to be something a bit simpler, with the essence of apples and the robust backdrop of a good red wine, rather than the more traditional pineapple and clove-studded affair.

It’s rich, flavorful and oh so decadent, especially when compared to the lighter foods that seem to come to the fore after the Thanksgiving and Christmas holiday season.

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