Preparedness

As I've mentioned before, one of the things that I strive for and that often frustrates me is organizing meals, including lunches that we can take to work. Most of the things I like to cook take a while to prepare, so they don't usually get made during the week. If I'm cooking something simple for dinner it often means we don't have leftovers for lunch. If I don't cook big on the weekends and a least once during the week, we end up in trouble for lunches. But thanks to an idea presented by my brilliant husband, I was able to make some preparation tonight for lunch-time goodness. Yesterday Greg said the magic words, "We should go buy a ham."

Siiiigh. The H-A-M. We actually do have to spell it around the pup. He learned that word early in his puphood and if he hears it he'll stalk you. The H-A-M tradition started when I worked at the bank. One of the few genuine perks from that job was that every year they bought every employee a ham during the holidays. How important was this generosity to us? One of my friends, who left several years before I did, claimed quite seriously that the offer she needed to change jobs was $40,000 and a ham. Believe it or not, her current employer has taken to buying her a gift certificate to Honey Baked Ham each year. They make a darn good H-A-M.

So tonight we made the trip to Honey Baked Ham to pick up half a ham. Yuuuum. Oh yeah, we made one more stop. The grocery store. For a loaf of bread. We're up for sammiches the rest of this week, and we're darn happy about it. I divided up the sliced section of the ham into 5 bags, four of which went into the freezer and one to take to work tomorrow. The butt of the ham and the bone went into the fridge for soup making later this week, which should produce another five or six lunches in the freezer. I still have two taco soups left, as well. If I can just put away a dozen or so packages of sketti sauce and sloppy joes for Greg I won't have to worry about lunches for several weeks, which makes dinner decisions easier. I'm also contemplating boiling up a pot full of the chicken I found in the freezer, making for soup and/or dumplings. I'm not sure the dumplings would freeze, but everything else would and I could add biscuit-dumplings for quick dinners with leftovers. This just gets better. AND... I have one more giant pork roast ready for the crock pot. I need more freezer contaiment vessels.

It's a good day. I have H-A-M.