Easter Dinner

I like to cook.

My kids are in college now but they came home for Easter.

So I bought an 8 1/2 lb spiral cut ham. Way too much for the three of us but there's nothing like a spiral cut ham and that was as small a ham as I could find.

I was sort of listening to Emeril Lagasse on Good Morning America and this is what I remember of his glaze, besides what I have in the house...

Some lemon juice - maybe a half a cup....about 1/3 cup brown sugar...some honey ...a couple of squirts of honey mustard (he said dry mustard but I didn't have any) ...some ginger..mix it up

Brush the ham with it and then keep basting every 1/2 hour.

Cheesy potatoes. You know that disgusting mixture of hash browns, cheese, cream of broccli (I think you are supposed to use cream of mushroom but my kids won't eat mushrooms and this is the way I can sort of get some vegetables in my son) ...sour cream, butter, and cheese. What I discovered today is that you CAN use frozen hash browns. They were all out of the refigreated bags so I bought frozen and just thawed it out. There's a recipe on the bag. My son loves these.

I roast two sweet potatoes, peel them, mash them, mix with a little cream a LOT of butter, vanilla extract, brown sugar and whip them up then reheat them. This is like a dessert, which is a good thing because I didn't have time to make cupcakes like I usually do for Easter.

I had some left over cole slaw. I cheated and bought the already bagged slaw cut with cabbage, carrots and broccoli - added a little balsamic vinegar, mayo...garlic salt, cayenne pepper ( l like to make it interesting)

Asparagus spears. Now I'm not real fond of asparagus - I used to cut it in the fields as a kid and I watched the geese run through the fields and poop on the asparagus but my daughter loves it. I need to learn to like it since it grows wild in my back yard. I nuke it in just a little water for about 8 minutes, add butter, lemon juice, garlic salt and lemon pepper.

I know -- it's an obscene amount of food for three people.

Today I will simmer the ham carcass and make a ham stock. I use that for making gumbo. Ham stock is what adds richness to gumbo. I make good gumbo.