Dry Run for the Holidays

I was planning to bake salmon with cream cheese last night. I was pulling out the salmon from the freezer when a ball of ham started to roll down towards my foot! Good thing I caught it! I would have been injured if I didn't. Haha. The fiesta ham reminded me that we had planned to cook it before the salmon. 

I don't get to cook as often as I want since the effort largely depends on my energy. There are days I have lots of energy and there are days when I just feel depleted. That's the life of someone who has a bunch of medical conditions. Anyway, preparing the ham was easier than baking the salmon. 

The fiesta ham has been in the freezer since early this year. It was still surprisingly available last January and we planned to cook it for CNY. Of course, we forgot about it and just got around to cooking it now. I paired it with (unmeat) chicken macaroni salad. We found a can of veggie chicken at the grocery and thought we'd try it out. Let's just say I had to add more cheese to make my usual macaroni salad tastier (LOL). 

We'll have lots of leftovers, so what I cooked is good until today. Yay! I'm happy I was able to cook thrice this week. I made salted egg chicken. I set aside some of the chicken and tried making buffalo wings sauce for it. I'm now stuck with a huge bottle of Tabasco sauce. This means I have to make buffalo wings often (hahaha). Next time I'll probably prepare a kilo of chicken and halve it into salted egg and buffalo wings sauce (I prefer strips over wings though). I have to research what else I could cook with Tabasco sauce. 

Have a blessed Sunday everyone :)

#BeKind #StaySafe

How We Make Pineapple Glazed Ham at Home

How I wish Purefoods can make their fiesta ham available all year. It's one of our favorite dishes especially during Christmas. We always had it for noche buena. I learned to eat macaroni salad because of pineapple glazed ham. It matches perfectly!

I learned how to magically turned the ball of ham into a sweet one through Mom. She told me to just add 1/4 cup of brown sugar. Of course, I had to figure out what she meant. My Mom doesn't cook, but she knows all the processes and just directs whoever is cooking, hehe. 

I experiment every year on what to do with the ham. What's important for us though is to have a lot of sauce. My boys like adding some of the sauce to their rice whenever we have this. This year I added two cans of pineapple juice (the one you drink) and a can of pineapple chunks plus brown sugar to the ham. The ham drowned when it was plated. So just use 1 can of pineapple juice. It turned out alright for us though since we still had extra sauce until we finished the whole ball of ham. 

You can also add cloves. Just add it sparingly to the ham while cooking or baking. It adds flavor. We couldn't find any cloves, so we'll just do that next year. Oh, and you can also opt to bake it instead of simmering it in a pot. I find it easier to simmer since baking takes sooo long, haha. Purefoods also now pre-slices the ham, so it's much easier to serve. It was hard to slice in the past when it was one whole ball.

Plated by Sweetie :)

 

I'm keeping one more fiesta ham for Valentine's day, haha. That or maybe for the Lunar New Year. Or maybe a random weekend when we're off our meal plan, LOL. I'm actually thinking of getting one more since I could keep it in the freezer for a special occasion. I'll get one if it's still available in the grocery, hehe. 

#BeKind #StaySafe