Dinner Planning

Weekly suggestions and seasonal recipes.

It’s January and a new year has begun. Families get together to celebrate birthdays and everyone has a busy schedule so why not have a slow cooker meal? A slow cooker meal like a Glazed Ham with candied sweet potatoes would make a nice dinner for a birthday.

All ingredients can be found at a local grocery store like Martins or Walmart. The ingredients for the glazed ham are boneless cooked ham, lemon juice, brown sugar, cinnamon, cornstarch, maraschino cherries and sliced pineapple juice. The size of the ham will depend on the number of people for dinner. Usually ½ pound per person. Before putting the ham into the slow cooker, take a knife and cut the ham the long way then cut it the short way to make a checkerboard pattern.  Now take the 2 ½ pound boneless cooked ham and place in a slow cooker. Take a can of sliced pineapples, drain the juice into a bowl. Then put the sliced pineapple on the ham using whole cloves or toothpicks. Now take maraschino cherries and put one in every center of each pineapple with a toothpick. Do not turn the slow cooker on yet.

In a small sauce pan combine the juice from the sliced pineapples with 1 tablespoon of lemon juice, 2 tablespoons of brown sugar, 1 teaspoon of cinnamon and 1 tablespoon of cornstarch. Combine all ingredients over medium heat until it thickens. Remove it from the stove and stir in 1 tablespoon of butter. Once it’s combined, brush it on the ham and cover. Turn the slow cooker on low and cook for 2 ½ to 3 hours. Check the internal temperature to make sure it’s 140 degrees. Now if the ham is bigger just increase the amount of ingredients for the sauce. For example a 6 pound ham would then require twice the amount of ingredients for the sauce. Also rule of thumb is about 30 minutes per pound. The ham is already cooked when putting it in the slow cooker it’s just heating the ham up.

For the candied sweet potatoes the ingredients are six large sweet potatoes, ground cinnamon, ground nutmeg, sugar, butter and salt. Peel and cut the sweet potatoes into cubes. in a small bowl mix 2 cups of sugar, 1 teaspoon of cinnamon, 1 teaspoon of ground nutmeg and a pinch of salt. Melt ½ cup of butter in a large skillet over medium heat then add sweet potatoes and stir until sweet potatoes are coated. Sprinkle the sugar mixture of the sweet potatoes and stir then cover with a lid. Turn the heat down to low and cook for an hour stirring every 10 to 15 minutes. The potatoes should be tender and the sauce will be thickened and darker in color.

Now if you want, you can pair these things with your choice of a vegetable.  Other than that enjoy.