I lied to Andy last Thursday. I called him from the car at about 5:00, which was two hours into a four-hour pick-up and drop-off marathon, and said I hadn’t had a second to think about dinner. I had thought about dinner. I had thought about it several dozen seconds that day — in the morning before I left for work, in the afternoon when I had returned from work with just enough time to wolf down a late lunch while standing in front of the fridge (thank God for string cheese) and then a few more times in between activities. “We have nothing to eat for dinner,” I told him via Bluetooth. That part wasn’t a lie. But since he’d be home from work before we’d be home from tennis/doctor/soccer, I figured he could deal with the slim pickins situation.
A few hours later we were sitting down to a frittata [1]. (The girls, egg-haters both, had chili [2] that had been thawed from the freezer.) I figured it would be a bare-bones, clean-the-fridge kind of frittata, but as soon as I had a bite, I tasted it. Bentons [3]! How could I have forgotten? The country ham that I gave Andy for Christmas. The country ham that, when you have it around, means you are never far from a really tasty dinner. The country ham from Tennessee that David Chang and Sean Brock use in their (internationally-acclaimed) restaurant kitchens and that our friend Sean (different Sean) first shipped to us a few years ago as a thank-you gift. The ham that we keep in our freezer and deploy in the smallest amounts whenever we need a hit of smoke or depth — in pea soup [4], white bean soup [5], pasta with peas [6]. The stuff is good. The stuff means we’re in for a treat. The stuff would make a great Valentine’s Day gift for someone you love a whole lot.*
*The waiting list can sometimes be long, your Valentine may have to be willing to accept a late gift. Also, no one’s going to stop you from ordering their bacon [7] either.
P.S. Speaking of Valentine’s Day, just one-clicked two of these [8].