The Thanksgiving Ham

Okay, real question: Have you ever seen The American Barbeque Showdown on Netflix? If you haven’t and are either a) an American who loves cooking, barbecue, or competition shows or b) a non-American who loves making fun of super American things, I highly recommend it. This show has everything: a black hulk, bitchy judges, an actual meat locker, brisket, strong female characters, a down south, back woods fella named Grubbs, and a contestant that has the immaculate energy of that tiger from Zootopia that you just know would treat you right.

Above all else, it had talented barbecuers battling head to head for ultimate bragging rights and probably a cash prize, I don’t know (I was in it for the meats, okay?). They showcased their skills and shared their knowledge with everyone watching. I found it exceedingly entertaining. Even the worst contestants like Ashley and Tina taught me a thing or two (worst meaning personalities, not expertise).

Anyway, you must be thinking, “Andreya, what does any of this have to do with your trauma?” Well, my friend, on a regular year, absolutely nothing. But I binged this series in two days: the Monday and Tuesday before Thanksgiving. This particular Thanksgiving was set in the year 2020, arguably the worst year in recent history. This Thanksgiving, for some reason, instead of buying a foolproof, precooked, delicious ham from the store with the little glaze packet that is currently making my mouth water, my father decided he was going to cook a whole, raw pig’s leg. For the first time. In the middle of the desert. On THANKSGIVING.

Oh yeah, I didn’t mention that every year since I could ever remember, my family goes camping in the desert for the holiday. RVs, quads and buggies, campfire, and a potluck every night. My dad’s brothers and others we have met throughout the years have come together and celebrated this, the holiday that reminds us all that colonizers took land from and spread smallpox to my ancestors, just the thing that gets my appetite ready and raring’ to go.

I am so bad at estimating size and weight, but the ham was pretty big. It had to be at least 15-20 pounds and had about an inch of fat around the whole thing. It so didn’t look like the beautifully packaged ham I was used to. But, fresh off one of my new favorite competition series (way up there with Iron Chef America and Forged in Fire), I was excited about an opportunity to get in on cooking something I never have before.

When I arrived at the desert on Wednesday evening, I conferred with my dad on the plan. His “plan” was to brine it for 8 hours…in a turkey bag. Wrap it in foil, dig a hole, dump it in with some coals, bury it, and have it magically perfectly done. Clearly, based on my newfound knowledge, I had a few questions to say the least. One of which is, “Do you have a thermometer? How are you going regulate temperature?” A question that was answered with disregard, because “the coals will be hot enough” or something along those lines.

Besides the weather and subsequently the earth being much colder due to it being November, somehow, burying hot coals doesn’t seem like an efficient way to keep them hot. But I’ve been known to be wrong before. Rarely, but it’s happened.

What I did know from binging what is the best barbecue competition I have ever seen is that temperature matters. If you don’t regulate the temperature, especially if you’re on a time crunch, it is a recipe for disaster. Which is another thing we didn’t have. A recipe. And if you don’t have a recipe, you can’t know what ingredients you need, which is another problem about camping. In the middle of the desert. Isolated from society. On a holiday. We lost a lot of the ingredients to the brine. Which means the post-brine ham was treated like if Cinderella were a red head.

Aside from not having the proper cooking methods and seasonings, I was hopeful that my dad, being the smart guy he is, would prove me wrong and we’d have a nice feast. That is the sort of dewy-eyed naiveté that really sets you up for massive disappointment that your very logical brain knew was coming all along.

So, we brined the ham, not in a turkey bag, thank God. My warnings went unheeded, and I washed my hands of this ham. That was kind of disappointing, because I was so excited to try to make it good. I love cooking and I love a new challenge, but just add this to the list of things that didn’t meet my expectations.

Cut to 3 p.m. the following day: Thanksgiving. Thanks to my Tia who always runs a tight schedule, we have eaten dinner every year on this day at 3 p.m. For reasons unrelated to the ham (a story I might save for later), she wasn’t camping with us this year, and dinner what subject to the schedule of the men who were preparing the meats, which garnered zero faith from me this year.

My mashed potatoes, stuffing, and gravy were done. Ready for the table, because I have been conditioned to know that if it isn’t done by 3, it isn’t making it to the table. We go out and check the time. “15 more minutes.” Okay. That’s a little annoying because the food is hot now, but that’s fine. Check again. “15 more minutes”. Again, annoyed. Not the end of the world.

As this pattern continued for the next couple hours, my annoyance and hunger grew while my patience and the heat from my side dishes decreased. We come to find out that they are frying the turkey and waiting on it to be finished in order to finish cooking the ham, which SURPRISE SURPRISE, DIDN’T fully cook from being buried in the ground for hours with a handful of coals on it. Shocker! It was overdone on the outside, burnt where the coals touched it directly on one side and completely raw all other places, which birthed the bright idea of frying it to finish.

Thinking about that thought process hurts my brain because frying isn’t a “cook something all the way through” method. It is, as you might know, intensely heated oil applied directly to the outside of a thing to create a crust and crunch. It works best with things that are thinly and evenly cut like French fries, chips, pickles, thin meats like bacon. NOT massive cuts of basically raw meat. As you can imagine, they fried it to death, trying to cook it through, which created a Cronenbergian nightmare of an overdone exterior and an inside that felt no love or warmth.

We ate dinner about two hours after it was regularly scheduled. Grace was not said, a tradition that had been as synonymous with our Thanksgiving dinners as that 3 p.m. deadline. The spread was highly disappointing in comparison to some of previous feasts we’ve enjoyed. The funniest thing was the ham was unrecognizable. I thought it was turkey because it was so over-cooked. It was like a piece of pork loin that lived too hard a life.

Part of me was disappointed because I wanted a good dinner – no one wants a bad dinner – but an even bigger part of me was living my very best smug life, because I was right. Everything that I said would go wrong did go wrong in the exact way I said it. After going back for seconds, because my mashed potatoes are always fucking amazing, I asked my dad what happened and his words were, I kid you not, “I wanted to prove you wrong.” Which is really so beautifully ironic and indicative of the type of relationship I have with him.

Aside from all of the other instances in my life where things like this have been a theme, this was truly the breaking point. It was here that I realized that my father would never respect me or anything I said, ever. Regardless of how logical, sensical, or knowledgeable the things I say sounded. No matter how I conveyed the message. No matter how many sources I cited. It wasn’t about doing something right or having a positive outcome. It is always him trying to be better and overshadow everyone because of his pride. It is something that I am used to. It is something I have seen my whole life, and it is a pattern that I fight against falling into every day.

The relationship with my father is an enigma in itself. We are the same. He taught me to be the person I am today with the mannerisms, the speech cadence, the attitude, the everything. He hates that I challenge him and talk to him in the way he talks to others. He doesn’t know how to handle it. I also doubt he sees the irony either. I have spent my life introspecting and analyzing my behavior, always striving to grow and be a better person than I was the day before. Maybe it’s because I have seen what you turn into if you don’t. Either way, Thanksgiving 2020 really fit the mold of the year, to say the least.

A/N: I know how privileged I am to have two parents, food on the table, and a place to lay my head. I am not ungrateful for any of it, and I know that not having real ham on a superbly American holiday that stands for so much gluttony, pain, and suffering isn’t the end of the world, but the point of this piece isn’t to flaunt and complain my own privilege. It’s about recognizing and letting go of things that I deem traumatic or a product of years of trauma so I can grow and move past them. Thank you for reading. Much love to you and yours.