Discussion Forum—A Way with Words, a fun radio show and podcast about language

Irma Rombauer quoted Dorothy Parker as saying that.  Of course, Mrs. Rombauer was writing a best-selling cookbook without actually knowing how to cook, amd Dorothy Parker never claimed that she was above re-purposing a good line, either, so who knows how far back that line goes?

You obviously have never had a country ham.  The last one I bought must have been 17 pounds, and to soak the salt out, it took close to a week, and then the race begins.  It's hard to eat it up before it goes bad on you.  You get about 15 pounds of usable meat, and it being a salty meat, you don't gobble down four ounces of ham as quickly as you would a quarter pound hamburger.

Anmd ham is more expensive than hamburger, in normal times.  Five years ago, I could get 10 pounds of freozen hamburger patties at Costco for $20, but it cost $4 to $6 per pound for ham.

And it's less adaptable than hamburger.  No matter what you add it to, it tastes hammy.  So if you and the missus eat ham and eggs for breakfast, ham salad sandwiches for lunch, and brown a ham steak for supper, each serving being 4 ounces (which is a LOT for two of those three meals), it'll take you the better part of two weewks to scarf it down.

Which is why stores sell many 8-ounce packages of chopped ham, and they sell picnics (made from the butt, the front shoulder; while the ham is from the tail end) or partrial hams, or "turkey hams", with few stores actually selling hams.

Mind you, this isn't theoretical knowledge.  When I was first living on my own I saw 3-pound canned hams at a *tremendous* good price, and it didn't take me long to call home pleading fort suggestions on how to use up that damnable ham.  At least 40 years later, when I tackled an entire country ham, I owned a deep-freeze.

You're right, there isn't much juice to the idea of trying to make it stretch, but believe you me, there's plenty of juice there for any fool who's ever gotten himself in such a bind.