Thanksgiving Ham

I like turkey, but I like ham better. So this year, I took matters into my own hands and made sure we had ham to go along with our turkey at Thanksgiving dinner. For about a year, I have been wanting to try a ham recipe with a secret ingredient: Dr. Pepper. That's right. I found a recipe for a spiral ham with a Dr. Pepper glaze (I'll provide the recipe at the end of this post, for all those eager to try it). So for Thanksgiving diner this year, I was in charge of preparing the ham, and I made it with the Dr. Pepper glaze. I thought it was quite good and would be interested in anyone else's honest opinion on it. It was really sweet, but I didn't think there was enough of it. You could really taste the glaze on the pieces of ham that were near the bottom of the pan that got soaked in the glaze while it cooked, but the rest of the ham tasted like normal ham. If I had to do it again, I would have doubled the glaze recipe and had half of it available (warmed) just to spoon onto your ham when you dish it onto your plate. Anyway, here's the recipe (thanks to the good people at Cooks Illustrated):

1/2 cup Dr. Pepper
3/4 cup light brown sugar
2 Tbs. fresh orange juice
2 tsp. Dijon mustard
1 spiral-sliced, bone-in ham (7-10 lbs.)

1. Bring Dr. Pepper, sugar, orange juice, and mustard to boil in medium sacepan. Reduce heat to medium-low and simmer until mixture is syrupy and measures 3/4 cup, about 8 minutes.
2. Remove ham from packaging and discard plastic disk that covers bone. Place ham in plastic oven bag, tie bag shut, and trim excess plastic. Set ham cut side down in 13 by 9-inch baking dish and cut 4 slits in top of bag. (If you don't have an oven bag, place ham cut side down in baking dish and wrap tightly with foil). Let stand at room temp. for 1 1/2 hrs.
3. Adjust oven rack to lowest possible position and heat oven to 250 degrees. Bake ham until center registeres about 100 degrees on instant-read thermometer, 1 1/2 to 2 1/2 hours, depending on weight of ham.
4. Remove ham from oven and roll back sides of bag to expose ham. Brush ham liberally wit glaze and return to oven briefly until glaze becomes sticky, about 10 minutes. Remove from oven, brush entire ham again with glaze, loosely cover with foil, and let rest for 30 to 40 minutes before carving.

Two War Novels

While I was reading All Over but the Shoutin (the book I just reviewed), I was also reading All's Quiet on the Western Front. I did not expect two war novels--or, more accurately, two anti-war novels--but that is what I got, though the styles varied vastly. All's Quiet on the Western Front is a traditional war novel, taking place (mostly) in the trenches of World War II. It tells of a group of young German soldiers and how they deal with the war and how the war deals with them. Everyone I know that has read this book rave about it, but I'm sorry to say that I never really got into it. Maybe I'm used to more modern, in-your-face anti-war novles/stories, which I love.

All Over but the Shoutin' probably couldn't even be labeled a war/anti-war novel--Bragg (the memoir's author) only tells one story early on in the book about his father's time in Korea. But that story is told with such skill that it really evokes that gut-wrenching feeling that makes you feel that war is never good. For me, that one story was much more effective than the entire book All's Quiet on the Western Front. But what made Bragg's book even more effective as an anti-war novel was the stories he told about what happened after his father returned from the war. He left a good, decent man and returned scarred man whose only refuge was alcohol. He was always drunk and made his wife and kids live in squalor and in fear of him.

Still, the best anti-war piece I have ever read is a short story by Tim O'Brien called "How to Tell a True War Story." It is a short story in O'Brien's collection of short stories about war called The Things They Carried. There are a lot of very good, highly regarded short stories in this collection, and I would recommend it, though it would probably be very depressing to try to sit and read it cover to cover. This story, more than any other anti-war story/novel/movie/documentary I have ever seen, makes you feel how terrible war is. It doesn't just describe war; it makes you feel it. Its cathartic in that sense--its tragic and sad, but it invokes feelings that, while unpleasant, are good to have because they remind us how terrible war is. I found a link to a pdf (thanks to the University of Wisconsin) of the story if you're interested in reading it: us.history.wisc.edu/hist102/pdocs/obrien_story.pdf.

Book Review: All Over but the Shoutin'

I just finished "All Over but the Shoutin,'" and it is the best memoir I have ever read (and I've read a few good ones: Life & Death in Shanghai, When I Was Puerto Rican). It is written by Rick Bragg, who is a Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times journalist. He has had an amazing life. He grew very poor in a tiny little town in Alabama. His father was a Korean War vet, an alcoholic, and a terrible father. But he had an amazing mother. Most of the book is really about her.

Bragg is an amazing storyteller, and the book is really just a series of well-told stories. The book is very well-written (if a little over-punctuated). He tells stories about growing up poor in the South, about the Korean War, and about his mother. Then he tells stories about being a journalist and the stories he covered. He specializes in telling stories of sadness and heartbreak, and he shares many such stories through his memoir. He only had 6 months of formal college education at a tiny little community college near his home, but he was a talented storyteller, and that took him all the way to a Harvard Fellowship, to a job at the New York Times, and to a Pulizter. I would highly recommend this book. Its only about 200 pages long, its easy to read, and its quite worth the effort.