Third Time is a Charm

C and I started a new tradition for the holidays whereby our families come to our house for Christmas dinner. This year will be our third year hosting anywhere between twelve and sixteen people. By now we have the whole affair down to a science but the first year did not go so smoothly.

We realized early in the day that when we built our house we chose to install only one oven. Great when we are making dinner for ourselves but how do you cook three side dishes when the entire thing is filled with a giant turkey that will take at least six hours to cook? Solution: we were watching our neighbor’s house so the rest of the day was spent walking back and forth to use her oven.

C’s father bought a ham to go with the turkey but he didn’t think to look at it before Christmas day. I wouldn’t either but when we did it was green. Green eggs and ham is one thing but a green ham is a bad sign. About the time C was discovering the strange tint to our meat I was cutting up iceberg lettuce to put in a salad. The knife slipped as it is wont to do in my hands and sliced a nice chunk out of my finger. In my typical melodramatic fashion I ran to the sink and fought off a fainting spell while C demanded to know why I had the knife pointed towards my fingers while cutting.

Once I had three inches of bandage wrapped around my finger, I began calling restaurants and hotels to replace the rotten ham. One hotel said yes they were in fact serving ham but that no they wouldn’t sell me one. Denied by some Scrooge and on Christmas day no less! The search seemed fruitless until I called the Matamoras Meat Market. In what little Spanish I remember from studying it multiple times throughout high school and college I was able to ask if they sold hams. Success at last, they were open and had ham.

I jumped in the car, throbbing finger still wrapped in three inches of bandage and headed to the meat market. With a spring in my step I walked through the doors and asked where I would be able to find the hams. With a smile, the gentleman behind the counter lifted a large, rectangular, slimy ham LOAF out of the cooler and asked how much I wanted. There was no ham for Christmas that year but what I didn’t eat in pork I made up for in wine. This year we will look at the ham, my grandmother will bring the salad, and we will definitely offer to watch the neighbor’s house.