WIAW 96 – The Second Day of Christmas

St. Stephen’s Day. Boxing Day. First day of Kwanzaa. Saturday. Day we all fall down and go flumph…

In Western culture, whether or not you celebrate Christ’s Mass as a Holy Day, or the great Merry Christmas of secular society (or both, as many of us do) it’s hard to avoid some notice of December 25… and the way the whole culture has been obsessing about it and revving towards it all month. So the day after seems to be for many people a day of relief, release, relaxation… And this year, it is on a weekend, so most of us do have the day off work.

For those who celebrate, the gifts have been given, the food has been eaten. One after another of my friends posted something about sitting around in PJs drinking cocoa and finally enjoying the pretty tree… reading the books, watching the DVDs, playing the games, listening to music… (Admiring their turtledoves? Actually, I don’t know anyone whose true love gave them turtledoves…) Relaxing.

Well, and wondering what they were going to do with the rest of the ham. All the online general cooking groups had someone looking for ideas…

I’d made a double batch of Gingerbread Waffles a few days earlier. I gave some to a recently gluten free friend, some are in the freezer to enjoy later, but we had them on both Christmas and the day after. I whipped cream with a touch of vanilla and ginger, slathered it on the waffles (instead of fruit or syrup) and put it in my coffee.

Then, on the Saturday, I panfried a slice of that ham, and added an egg over easy. (Well – it was supposed to be over easy. It slipped, and the yolk broke, and you know – I don’t care, it still tasted good.)

At lunch I wanted Not Ham… made a quick chicken soup, ate it with corn muffins I’d made the day before. And forgot to take a picture – but that’s a combination I eat often enough that I had an old one, so I cheated… looks close enough! This time, though – I’d cooked up a whole batch of whole sorghum, and frozen it in small containers. This was the first time I used one of them, and yes, that idea worked well and I will continue to do it. See – I miss barley in soup – I like its texture better than noodles or rice or anything else people throw in to get mushy. (I have a Thing about texture… and I do not like mushy!) Sorghum works pretty well, but takes too long for most of my recipes. This solved that problem.

And then I did go to work, cooked and photographed the Confetti Ham Casserole so that I could publish it while people still had ham…. Baked a potato while I was at it – I want to start eating and writing about potatoes more – but didn’t get a shot of it, as I was just thinking of the recipe post, not this one.

Not my most organized picture day, but I decided to go ahead with it anyway, instead of starting over… Everything was good… and really pretty easy, since most of the food was already cooked – just had to be combined and heated.

So now that it is the Sixth Day of Christmas (and I don’t want six geese a-laying! I have nowhere to put them!) and we all fly off to join Laura for Jenn’s WIAW party! (The desert was colder than NYC on Christmas. That’s just weird…)

Have a wonderful New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day!