Two newlyweds were spending their first Christmas together. Wanting to celebrate properly, the new wife asked her mother for the famous Christmas Ham recipe. The husband was excited.
He watched as the wife prepared to dutifully follow the recipe. Curiously though, she started by slicing off a thick slab of meat from each end of the ham. The husband asked why she was throwing away so much good ham. “That’s just what the recipe calls for”, she told him. “Just wait till you taste it.”
And sure enough, the ham was spectacular.
The next year, the newlyweds went to the wife’s parents’ house for Christmas. The mother, known as a phenomenal cook, made the Christmas ham, as she had every year for decades. She too sliced a thick slab of meat off each end of the ham. The husband, now assuming this was the secret to the great ham, asked the mother about the technique. “That’s just what the recipe calls for”, she told him. He asks where she got the recipe, and the mother says that her mother invented it in the old country.
The next year, the whole family got together, including the grandmother. Christmas ham again. Finally, the husband had the opportunity to ask the grandmother about the recipe and why it called for all the wasted ham.
The grandmother said “Well, in the old country, things weren’t like they are now. We used to cook this ham all the time. When we got to America, the hams! They’re so big! We didn’t even have a pan big enough to cook them in, so I had to cut some off of each end just to make them fit.”
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