My father-in-law is a pain the ass. He is in his 70's now and retired. And a major pain in the ass. He's got the regular old man pain in the ass stuff going on. He's fat and diabetic. Seriously, he is fat. Stands 5' 5" tall by 5x5 wide. Rides one of those skooters around, eats what ever the hell he pleases, says what he wants, unkind things. My kids refuse to be around him except holiday dinners. But he takes it up a level because he has been an asshole all his life. So now he's an old asshole. I have to admit, I certainly didn't think he'd last this long. But of course because he's an asshole he has. My sweet mother in law passed away years ago. He left her for another woman when my husband was 9 years old. Scarred him for life and I'm the one that picked up all the pieces from THAT trauma. He was married and divorced several more times, to increasingly bizarre women that I had to put up with at family events and shield my children from. After the last divorce, to a 7x married born-again christian lady that said they were going to spend our inheritence, I put my foot down and absolutely forbid him from marrying again. I told him just to get on his skooter and go screw around like he used too. I guess he's over that now. Thank goodness.
So he called me last week. First he called my cell phone, but I was on my work phone. So he called my work phone. I was still on the phone, an important call, so I didn't put the person on hold, I let it go to voice mail. In about 30 seconds someone from the front comes back and starts waving at me to get my attention. I put the person on hold, and they tell me "your father in law is on the phone, he says it's important." By the time I end my call and go to pick up his call, he's hung up. When I dial him back, it's busy. The person from up front hustles into my office and says, "He's on 2 again." Deep breath, pick up the phone. "Thank you for calling, this is Sunny, can I help you?" Which pisses him off to no end. He tells me he's ordered a ham for Thanksgiving. Which is two weeks away. I promise I wasn't running out to do the holiday dinner shopping that very minute, so he had to blow up every phone to get to me before I did. I thank him and hang up.
As much as I'd like to be a bitch back to him, I seldom can. My southern manners and respect for family just runs too deep. My husband can't really be too hard him either, and he has way more reasons to than me. I always say that he is the good man he is because of his mother. She loved that man til the day she died, even though he broke her heart. Thank goodness for the anonymity of the internet, I can tell the world what an asshole he is.
On Sunday afternoon, my husband went over to visit with him and watch the first half of the local team's football game. On his way out, his dad tells him to take the ham in the fridge to me. So husband brings it home and hands it over to me. I'm in charge of the ham now. It's huge. It's a WHOLE ham. I have never in my life bought a WHOLE ham. It must be 20 lbs. Because 7 people need an average of 3 lbs of meat apiece for Thanksgiving dinner. It's in a plastic garbage bag that's leaking, so I take it out to get a good look at it. He's opened it. He ate some of it. It's a week and a half to Thanksgiving. Cured meat or no, it's not going to last until then. What the hell am I going to do with this thing? I don't even buy these kinds of hams, because of the nitrates. According to the label:
Ingredients:
Pork, water, salt, sugar, sodium phosphate, flavorings, monosodium glutamate, sodium erythorbate, sodium nitrite and sodium citrate. Glazed with sugar and real honey.
Glad they used real honey. Our health is safe now.
So, I figure the only thing I can do is cut it all off the bone, bag it up and freeze it until Thanksgiving.
I sharpen up a good knife and start in on it. Get out a bigger cutting board. Some big bowls to put the sliced ham in. The cussing gets pretty loud because this is some major work here. About the time 18 year old son gets home, I'm hacking at the bone with a cleaver and am surrounded by mounds of ham, flecks of it are in my hair. He asks what I'm doing. I told him I was butchering a hog. He said he was cool with that. Five gallon size zip-loc bags of meat plus two of soup bones and I'm finally done. After cleaning everything up, I have to empty the freezer to re-arrange everything and finally get it all to fit.
I guess the rest of the life of this blog will be recipes for left over ham.
I'm making turkey for Thanksgiving.
I had a father in law like that too, but he's dead now and I don't miss him an ounce. Isn't that awful?
ReplyDeleteMy aunt does this amazing thing with leftover ham. She cooks a bunch of rice, hard boils a half dozen or so eggs, gets some provolone and mozzarella cheese, makes a pot of spaghetti sauce and makes a lasagna type casserole bake out of it. She cubes the ham and the eggs and mixes everything else together and layers it with the provolone cheese.
OMG. It is so good, you won't even mind the nitrates.
It isn't awful. What are we supposed to do when someone in our life is an ass? Be all saintly and love them anyway? F that, the're assholes. What's God going to say when we get up there? Good job on the asshole loving thing? I'm going to ask him why the hell the asshole got to be an asshole for so f'ing long and my saintly mother in law had to die before she got to see how great her grandkids turned out.
ReplyDeleteBecause I love cheese so much, I'm going to make a small batch of this and give it a try. I would never have come up with putting these ingredients together. I used a little of the ham to make a Hawaiian pizza last night, so if pineapple and tomato sauce taste good with melted cheese, this has to be worth a go.