This Little Piggy

I wasn’t going to serve any more pork because pigs are so smart and I hate to eat tortured meat.  But it’s Easter and I’ve recently discovered online food shopping like groceries from Jet or Amazon and decided to look for humanely raised ham, just for Easter this year (I imagine there’s no hope for kielbasa.  Anyway last few times I ate this family favorite I felt like it was going directly to my heart.)  I found some heritage pigs pasture raised in Canada and shipped to my heavenly place on Earth, Vermont, to be cured in maple syrup at Shelburne Farms—but they were sold out until after Easter.  SO I tried two others.  William Sonoma, same heritage pigs, but spiral sliced (easy to serve but never as tasty), and a boneless one from Circle B Ranch.  They were both good. 

Since I spent a fortune on humane meat I decided to be frugal as I USUALLY am in all the dishes on Dinner Accomplished!  So is used the ham bone to make a stock:

Simmer the ham bone in a stock pot with water, and the usual stock vegetables.  I only had two carrots. I cooked it about an hour , it made nice steam and it’s a cold rainy April Saturday.  Skim the fat, scum, bubbles off the top (there wasn’t much with my William Sonoma ham!).  Remove the ham bone and the carrots.  I added a whole handful of parsley, roughly chopped (I just read that parsley and also grapefruit are magic weight loss foods and parsley is usually a cheap herb so I keep bunches of it on hand now and use it everyday!).  I added an entire bag of DRIED RED LENTILS, a chopped yellow onion, salt, pepper, ginger to taste, cumin to taste, simmered until the lentils soft—or much longer like I did, achieving disintegration like pea soup. 

I reheated it with roughly chopped spinach and a chopped tomato,

and served it over rice with the most delicious (humanely produced) sausages from Circle B Ranch!  (I had to add  more products to have the ham shipped so….)

This also makes a super vegetarian dish without the ham bone and the sausages (I know, I make everything twice to include a vegetarian version for my daughter.  Well actually I usually just make things vegetarian for everyone, but sometimes there’s precious Easter ham and sausages)