Hope everyone is having a great Christmas Eve.

The wife and I have pretty much given up any pretense of healthy eating until day after tomorrow. Last night, I made her my own dish, champagne chicken, with fettuccine covered with basil cream sauce. I also made a pile of garlic rolls. She loved going to Italian restaurants when we were traveling, and she said this beat them all. She said it was like a 5-star restaurant.

Today I’m fixing a Honey-Faked ham. I like Honey-Baked ham, but I can’t see spending $13 per pound for something I can make for about $2.75, better. I have a recipe I made up, and it works great. Right now I have a Smithfield spiral ham, bought on sale, resting on a broiling pan. They come pretty wet, so I’m letting the liquid drip out of it before applying the crust and using the blowtorch.

We may make cookies. I am also considering making bourbon balls, a Kentucky favorite. They’re just chocolates full of bourbon-flavored goo. They’re generally pretty bad, but I have an idea for fixing them. I plan to make Kentucky cream candy, flavor it with bourbon, and use it for the filling.

It’s hard to describe cream candy, so I won’t try, except to say it’s like soft, butter-flavored chalk made from sugar.

For around 10 days, I’ve had a rib roast sitting in the fridge covered with salt, butter, and garlic. Tomorrow, it comes out. I’ll serve it with potatoes au gratin and Caesar salad, made with real dressing based on a Serious Eats recipe. It turns out Kenji Lopez-Alt isn’t totally useless. I’ll follow up with creme brulee. I came up with a very easy recipe that doesn’t require a water bath. You just bake at 205°.

We plan to watch the Charlie Brown Christmas special today. We have to buy it at Walmart. Apple bought the Peanuts specials three years ago, and they refuse to stream the Christmas show on anything but their ridiculous platform. They keep it off network TV.

I like the show because it’s one of the few Christmas specials that mention Yeshua. It’s not about snowmen animated by witchcraft or deer that pull an imaginary fat guy around on a sleigh. It’s not about feeling good about yourself on your alternative drag Christmas. It’s not about imaginary critters that eat roast beast.

It’s funny how many of the best-known specials were created by Jews. You can’t really expect good things to happen when you turn Yeshua’s birthday over to people who think he was a magician who went to hell and then founded the Nazi Party.

I wouldn’t try to write a Passover or Ramadan special.

Dr. Seuss was Jewish. I love his work, and I enjoyed the Grinch cartoon, but there was no Grinch in the gospels unless Herod and the high priests count.

Things keep getting better here. People told me we were still on our honeymoon because we had spent so little time together. They said we would learn what marriage was really like once my wife got here. In reality, we get along even better now. That’s a relief.

We may be the most boring couple on Earth. We get up, pray, eat cookies for breakfast, goof off, buy groceries, eat again, pray, and sleep. It seems to suit both of us well.

I wondered if a young woman would be bored in the country, far from malls and so on, but she loves it here.

God really looked out for us.

I have to go buy cheese for the potatoes, so I will sign off. I leave you with the ham recipe. There is still time.

INGREDIENTS

1. Honey glue

1/2 cup orange blossom or other light-colored honey
2 tbsp. prepared yellow mustard
1 tbsp. butter

2. Sugary crust

1 cup caramelized sugar
1 cup dark brown sugar
1/2 tsp. salt
1 tbsp. cloves
1 tsp. nutmeg
1/4 tsp. allspice

Flop the ham face-down on a plate. Let it sit in the fridge for a while to see how much water comes out. You don’t want it too wet.

Apply the glue and then pack on the crust. Set it with a torch if you want. Refrigerate.

MORE

In case anyone else wants to try Kentucky cream candy, I’ll post a recipe, but I only have my own version, which I made with real maple syrup instead of sugar. I invented this myself, and it is well worth the cost of real syrup. Believe me.

If you want to eat this tomorrow, you need to make it today so it has time to turn into real cream candy.

If you don’t do it carefully, you may end up with hard candy, which is still a win. When cream candy is made correctly, it sort of disappears in your mouth. It’s different.

INGREDIENTS

1-1/2 cups maple syrup (not fake maple)
1/2 cup heavy cream
1/4 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. vanilla

Dump the syrup and salt in a deep saucepan. It will bubble up, so you don’t want a shallow pan. Heat until it boils gently. Add the cream slowly. You don’t have to stir it.

You can add the vanilla at the start, or if you’re afraid boiling will hurt it, you can drizzle it on the candy right before you pull it. Pulling will work it into the candy.

Boil the mixture until it hits 260°. When you start getting close to the final temperature, get a pan ready to chill the candy. Put several teaspoons in the pan, concave side down. Fill the pan with ice and water, a little deeper than the height of the spoons. Butter a smaller pan.

When the candy is ready, put the small pan in the big pan and pour the candy into it. When the candy is cold enough to remove with your hands, remove it and form it into a long rod. Stretch the rod, fold it, and stretch it again. You want to do this for about 5 minutes. The candy will develop a satiny look.

Stretch the candy until it’s thin enough to make pieces of a convenient size. Cut it into small pieces with shears. Set it aside until it “creams,” meaning until it turns soft and chalky. This may take a whole day.

Don’t try to cut the candy with a knife or cleaver.

You should be able to use any flavoring you like. You could buy menthol crystals and make peppermint candy. You would need to use table sugar instead of syrup. A cup of sugar is about equivalent to 3/4 cup syrup.