Cooking Tip of the Day

20 minutes is not 1/5 of an hour. Mental math done while stumbling towards bed for a nap is probably not good. Follow my logic here for timing a piping hot ham for dinner:

* 1 pound cooks in 20-25 minutes, therefore a 5 pound ham will cook in 1 hour, so my 11 pound ham will cook in a little over 2 hours. I won't have to start it until 4, which works because I was only planning on napping until 3.

start to drift off to sleep and then...

* 25 minutes is almost 1/2 hour. At 1/2 hour per pound, my 12 pound ham will take 6 hours. Crap! It's already 2:00! But we'll assume that my ham will cook in the 20-minute range instead of the 25 minute range.

sleep for exactly 2o minutes, wake up realizing your horrible math error, and head for the kitchen to bake a ham.

So after I got the ham in the oven (which had pre-heated itself while I was wrangling the ham - which is not actually a ham but a pork shoulder wrapped in a fishnet stocking because 10 pm on Easter night at Wal Mart is not an ideal ham-buying situation), I used an actual calculator to determine when my ham might be done. At 11.67 pounds, my ham will be done between 6:25 and 7:40. At the time, that seemed perfect because Scott worked 10-6 today.

oops - I forgot to factor in the lunch break. Scott works 10-6:30, and has to stop at the store on the way home. He's really not going to be here much before 7:30, and even that assumes that he'll leave work on time, which he rarely does.

But it's ok - the ham will probably still be cold when he gets home. Last time we made a ham (which was actual ass-ham and not shoulder-ham) it took WAY longer than the directions said it would. Besides, I didn't put the thermometer in it, so I won't know when it's done anyway! It'll be ready when Scott gets home to hoist it out of the oven. 12+ pounds of cured meat, pan, and 1" of water is heavy, and I have crappy upper-body strength.

This, boys and girls, is a pretty good object lesson on just why I don't cook. It's heavy, slimy, requires forethought and planning, and leaves pools of pink hammy goo all over the stove.