Salad and Ham? Hope you like it Sam-I-Am

Last Friday night we had three couples over for dinner. I planned on making a spiral sliced ham since it has no last minute prep like gravy or carving. I could warm it in the oven, take it out shortly before the guests arrived, and let it sit on the counter covered in foil. I asked each couple before hand if any one had dietary or religious restrictions about ham. I laughed when our friend Janet e-mailed back "We love ham. We don't get the  opportunity to eat it very often. A ham and two people is a life-long commitment." So true. After serving eight people, it has been a week of munching by the two of us and one happy Golden Retriever, and there is still ham  in the refrigerator. And this was half a ham!

These Costco hams are really good and it is true they do not taste salty.
I never bother with the glaze though. You don't need it. 

I also served a make ahead salad from a recipe of my mom's. She had gotten the recipe from the owner of a diner we frequented in the 1950's-1960's near my childhood home in New Jersey. At that time it was called the Clairmont Diner on St. George's Ave in Linden, NJ. The internet is amazing. I just googled it and it still exists only under the name the Linden Diner. Here is the recipe in my sister's handwriting.

I remember hot summer nights in New Jersey when mom would serve this icy cold salad with dinner.

I embellished it just a bit. Instead of one green pepper, I used half each of a green, a yellow, an orange, and a red pepper. I also used half of a huge red onion and half of a huge sweet yellow onion and apple cider vinegar instead of white. In this day of health consciousness I usually use olive or canola oil but for this recipe I stuck with the original flavor of the vegetable oil. I did cut back the salt about half but was reluctant to eliminate it since I think it is part of the pickling process. I sliced the cabbage about 1/4 thick instead of finely shredding it and I peeled the cucumbers before slicing to remove the waxed bitter skins. I made the salad on Tuesday for a Friday dinner using an upside down Tupperware™ cake taker to mix it all and store in my refrigerator, inverting and stirring each day. It makes a lot. That cake taker is very full so that the bottom barely fits on, but the vegetables do break down a bit and compact as they marinate. After dinner I still had enough to send each couple home with a quart container of the marinated salad. It keeps well.

Just curious I googled looking for the salad recipe itself. I found something very similar at allrecipes.com called the Claremont Salad. Hmmm. I wonder what the real history on this recipe is. The site's version is just a bit different but the marinade is essentially the same.

I wonder if this Claremont Salad hearkens back to the Clairemont Diner in New Jersey?
I do not believe New Jersey to be the hot bed of high cuisine
but this simple salad does have a homemade local ethnic folk taste to it.

Then I found that some else, now in Brazil, had posted about this salad. Click on this link for another person's memories. I guess it is more famous than I realized. http://tropicaldaydreams.blogspot.com/2012/01/claremont-diner-in-clifton-nj-i-grew-up.html

For the table setting I used our Barnyard Toile dishes and the yellow and black napkins I'd made to match the yellow table cloth.

Two of the plates carried out the ham theme.
The other six were two roosters, two cows, and two sheep.

We retired to the living room for a bit after dinner, enjoyed some relaxed conversation, and then switched off to the kitchen nook area to play two rousing games of Farkle. We had fun.

John and Marita, the couple who brought Farkle to play, each won a game. Suspicious?

Tomorrow night we are having three guests over for dinner. (Hey, if you've already cleaned the house, why waste it? It did not get that dirty in a week... ) We are not serving ham. Enough is enough!