Happy Holidays!

Our holiday dinner(s) were very quiet this year. We were able to enjoy time with one another and our cat, but we didn't see much of our family and friends because everyone seemed to go in different geographic directions this year.

Unfortunately, if we don't go to my husband's family's house for Christmas dinner, I don't get my annual ham fix. I love ham. Part of my fascination is that my parents never cooked ham when I was growing up, so I always had to rely on my friends' families at Easter and Christmas. There's something about salted and smoked pork that I've never been able to turn down.

Anyway, since there would be no easy ham for me this year, we determined to have a small one for ourselves on Christmas Eve. Yes, Christmas Eve, not Christmas. We forgot to take the roast beef (which we were supposed to have on Christmas Eve) out of the fridge in time for it to get up to room temperature before cooking it, so we went with the ham.

My husband got a small (2-3 lb) Corn Cob and Maple smoked (but uncured) ham from Vermont Smoke and Cure, which was already fully cooked, so all I had to do was wrap it in foil and warm it up in the oven for 10 minutes per pound, according to the website. That was crap. It took well over an hour in a 400-degree oven to get our meat thermometer to register even a lukewarm 90 degrees in the interior of the ham. But, despite the wait, the ham was the best we've ever had - smoky with a roasted corn scent, maple-syrup flavor, not too salty, and perfectly moist and delicious. Too bad we were eating it around 9:00.

With the ham we had roasted acorn squash - slice the squash in half lengthwise, scoop out the seeds, and fill the resulting cavity with maple syrup and butter, salt and pepper. Bake in a baking dish covered with aluminum foil at 400 degrees for about an hour, or until the squash is tender. Finally, we made a big romaine lettuce salad with a lemon-mustard vinaigrette to go with it all.

And for dessert, baked pears with maple syrup. We whipped our own cream to go on top - so easy. Just get a metal bowl really cold (put in the freezer for 10 minutes or so), then add your cream, a little sugar and vanilla extract, and whip until frothy with a whisk (it takes about 1-2 minutes of steady whipping). I try to tell myself that the calories expended while manually whipping the cream make up for my eating the whipped cream. In any event, it's better than the plastic stuff that comes from a tub, and you can control how sweet it is and what flavor you want. Now that I think of it, I probably should have put a little apple brandy in the cream instead of the vanilla...