10 Things To Make With Leftover Ham

This is a wayyyyy overdue post. Remember me blogging about our Easter dinner? We had a really huge 12 lbs ham and some other sides. I think I mentioned that we will be having leftover ham for the longest time and yes, we did just that! It took us a little more than 1 week to finish all the leftover ham :P So, what did we do with all that ham?

Welll, initially we ate it with the leftover sides that we had. Once that was all gone, we started to make other sides to go along with it. For example, we made some spinach and wheat pasta with cream sauce as a side. Sometimes we would eat it with things like broccoli cheese rice, herb rice or even rice pilaf.

Of course we also made sandwiches with the ham. We would just put some mayo and mustard on any type of bread with a few pieces of ham. Makes a great midnight snack! Kevin would also take it to work for lunch.

Another variation is to make chopped ham salad sandwich. Just chop the ham into tiny pieces and mix it with mayo, a little bit of deli mustard and sweet relish. It's really really yummy. You can put it on bread, stuff it in a pita, in a crescent roll, use it in a tortilla wrap....you can use it with almost anything!

Leftover ham is also great for casseroles. I made a ham and broccoli casserole with some of the leftover ham. It's real easy to make and really good too. I'll post the recipe for it in another post, another time :P

If you don't really have time to make a casserole, just buy one of those instant pasta packets and add in some ham when you are cooking it in the microwave. It gives that extra yummy kick to your mac n cheese!

We also whipped up some nice omelets with the leftover ham. Just cut the ham into chunks, throw it in a pan with eggs, some herbs, cheese and voila! You got yourself a nice ham omelet for breakfast or brunch!

Chopped ham also makes a good topping for salads. We ate it with some iceberg lettuce, croutons, Parmesan cheese and ceaser salad dressing. Mmm mmm mmm :D

Another yummy thing to make with leftover ham are pies and quiches. Shown here is a ham and cheese pie. To get the recipe for ham quiche, just click here. You just have to substitute the bacon with ham and spinach with broccoli. If you like spinach, you can make it with spinach too!

Cooking with leftover ham is not limited to Western dishes. A quick and easy Asian dish to make is fried rice. I would just fry up the ham with some mixed vegetable and rice. I added in some franks into my fried rice that day and topped it up with a fried egg. I served it with some dumpling and egg drop soup.

If you are not a fan of rice, you can eat it with noodles too. I would just slice up the ham and eat with any sort of noodle soup and vegetables. This time around, I ate it mee suah (thin rice noodles) and cabbage. I would sometimes eat it with nissin noodles or regular lo mien (yellow noodles) too. If you are not in the mood for soup, it taste equally good too if you fry it with instant noodles and make some ham maggi goreng!

There are still tons of things you can make with your leftover ham. There is no right or wrong, just be creative and I assure you that it will be yummy. This is our ham on Easter evening and what's left of it about 8-9 days later :P Hope you like some of the stuff I made with the ham. Go ahead, try out new recipes the next time you have leftover ham and don't forgot to share them with me!!!

33rd Annual Cherry Blossom Festival

Branch Brook Park is located between the neighborhoods of Forest Hill and Belleville. At about 4 miles long, approximately 360 acres and 1/4 miles in width, it's the nations first county park and is becoming one of the largest urban parks in the United States today. The park has a natural feel, with acres of meadows and forest. There is also a large lake, tennis courts, walking trails, ball fields and skating rink as well. Our apartment is less than a mile away from the park. It's proximity to such a beautiful park is one of the reasons why we chose to live here in Forest Hill.

The main attraction of Branch Brook Park is the 4,000 cherry blossom trees in more than fourteen different varieties. Unknown to many people, the cherry blossoms here are greater in both variety and number than the famed Washington D.C. cherry blossoms. By 2010, 5,000 more cherry blossom trees will be planted due to the $650k grant by the Essex County park restoration fund. Known to the locals as Cherry Blossom Land, the park holds a spectacular Annual Cherry Blossom Festival each year in April.

There are a host of events that runs through the month of April. It starts off with the 10km Cherry Blossom Run followed by the Cherry Blossom Gala, a bicycle tour , photography workshops, the Cherry Blossom Brown Bag Lunch Series as well as the Susan G Komen Race. The highlight of the Cherry Blossom Festival is of course the Bloomfest! This years Bloomfest was held on the 19th of April. Visitors from all over the country come to the Bloomfest ever year. Since it's practically in our backyard, we decided to go check it out too! We knew that there would be a huge traffic jam if we tried to drive into the park, so we just parked in the housing area (together with all the locals from Forest Hill ;P) outside the park and walked in. Looks like we made the right choice. Not only was there a major traffic jam, there wasn't any parking spots left inside the park! Look at the amount of cars just stuck in the jam, they couldn't move at all. Even though it was quite a walk, we got there faster than those driving.

Look at the beautiful colors of the cherry blossoms! The colors ranges from white to really dark pink! They also come in various heights and sizes. Some were pretty short...

...while other trees were spread out and really tall! I also love how the cherry blossoms just fall down like pink snow every time the wind blows. It was so beautiful. Pink cherry blossoms covered the ground almost everywhere we looked. Pink was definitely the color of the hour!

We arrived at the Main Stage area just in time for the Kimono fashion show by Nihonwasou USA. The lady gave a detailed explanation about the various types of kimonos, when is appropriate to wear which type and the history of kimonos.

We wandered over to the Cultural Tent to see what is happening there. Looks like we have just missed the Bonsai Demo by the Bonsai Society as well as the Urasenke Tea Ceremony. Madam Nobuko Novak was just starting with her Ikebana Demo. Ikebana is the Japanese art of flower arrangement. I found out that it's more than just arranging flowers in a vase. The general rule is that everything must be organic and that it should be simple or some say is the art of minimalism. Every flower, branch and leaf has a meaning and it signifies something. Pretty interesting. We also had a chance to look at other Ikebana arrangements by other people that were on display.

Madam Nobuko's demo was a tad bit slow for us :P, so we headed to the Cherry Blossom Center to see what was happening in there. There was an exhibition on the various types of cherry blossoms trees and visitors also had a chance to talk to park rangers about cherry blossom trees as well as Branch Brook Park in general. There was also a few other things happening in the smaller meeting rooms of the Visitors Center. There was a book signing in one of the rooms as well as a calligraphy demo by the Kampo Cultural Society. We sat in for a bit to watch an origami demonstration by a lady named Mary Kao. It was pretty interesting actually.

After that, we walked around the grounds where there were booths set up by various organizations in the community as well as smaller booths that sold cultural and hand made crafts.

Shown here are the girls from the NJ School of Dance. They were teaching the kids various types of cultural dances. They later put on a mini showcase of various Asian dances.

There was also a booth that had a bonsai plants exhibition as well as bonsai trimming/bonsai care demonstrations throughout the day. I think Kevin liked that booth lots!

One of my favorite part of Bloomfest was the drum circle. The guy in front was teaching and leading the rest of the people in the drum circle. They had a few different kinds of drums and anybody could just sit down and join in the drum circle.

Guess who went to join in? :D

There were also a lot of activities for the children. They had children's craft like sand art and spin art as well as face painting, kite flying and bracelet/necklace making.

If you are not interested in all the activities that were simultaneously going on at various locations, you can just sit back and have a picnic under the lovely cherry blossom trees. Many families, from kids to grandparents were just enjoying the day by having picnics and just relaxing. Check out the Yoko Ono look alike. She was taking the longest nap under that big shady cherry blossom tree! I was just waiting for the two monkeys on the tree to fall on her..hahaha. Yes, I am mean :P

Bloomfest wouldn't be Bloomfest if it didn't have any yummy carnival food, right? Our last stop for the day was at the food section. There were all kinds of carnival food like hot dogs, cheese steaks, pulled pork sandwiches, funnel cakes, zeppoles, fried oreos...the list goes on. We bought a bag of zeppoles. It's basically deep fried dough balls covered with powdered sugar. Mmm mmm mmmm :D It tasted a little bit like donuts but the consistency is more chewy.

We also bought this totally amazing drink. It's Iced Tea mixed with Lemonade! It comes in a huge 32oz cup with lemon and lime wedges. Really really refreshing.

We had a great time at the Cherry Blossom Festival in Branch Brook Park. I'm so glad that we live so close to such a great park. I just can't wait for the other events that will be happening from now until the end of summer. Some of the upcoming events will be the Fishing and Boating Derby in May, the Farmers Market starting in July til October and Movies Under the Stars, every Friday night in July. Oooohhhh I just can't wait!

Note: Click here to see more photos of the Cherry Blossom Festival

Our Easter Dinner

Since we didn't go back to Pittsburgh for Easter this year, we had a relatively quiet and simple Easter dinner at home. We started our day by going to church, followed by the supermarket to pick up some groceries (yes, Pathmark was open on Easter). Look at what Kevin bought from Walgreens. It's huge! I placed a coin beside it so that you can have an idea of the size. Not too shabby for only $2.00!! Oh, and it's not hollow. Almost 400g of solid milk chocolate :P

Our Easter dinner was great! Wanna know why? Kevin made like about 90% of it. So niceeee. My only job was to set the table, bake the Pilsbury dinner rolls and put a few things in the microwave :D Wanna see what we had for dinner?

Mmmm mmmm mmmmmm...Kevin did a good job in making dinner :D This is what we had.

• A - Baked Maple Honey Glazed Ham
• B - Chicken Flavored Stuffing
• C - Steamed Brussel Sprouts
• D - Creamed Spinach
• E - Macaroni Salad
• F - Red Skin Potato Salad
• G - Pilsbury Dinner Rolls

Since Kevin used an oven bag to bake the ham, it was really juicy and nice. Always use an oven bag when you bake your ham, it makes all the difference :D We have so much leftover from dinner that I think we will be eating ham for the next week or so. I guess you will see me blogging about all the various meals you can make with leftover ham in the near future!! :P

Happy Easter Everybody!!!

Wishing all our readers a very

Blessed Easter!

Macy's Flower Show 2009

We were in the city today to catch the circus (will blog about that later) in Madison Square Garden, so we took the PATH to 33rd St from Pavonia/Newport station. We were a little bit early, so we decided to walk across the street to Macy's flagship store in Herald Square to check out the Macy's Annual Flower Show.

I guess it's a big event here in NYC. There were just so many people there, despite the weather (it was raining on and off). The show runs from April 5th til April 19th. Macy's imported in all kinds of flowers from all over the world just for this show. Since it's such a big thing, we decided to brave the crowds and went in to see what the hype is all about.

Here is a photo of the window displays around the store. This are the same famous window displays that they would do up for Christmas. All of the displays are interactive, with moving parts, sound and the whole works. I just wish I took a better picture of them. It's really hard cos there were just too many people. Look at the amount of flowers used in the display!

We were greeted by two giant flower flamingos the moment we walked into the store. It was such a sight. There were just flowers and plants everywhere!! On top of the perfume/cosmetics counters...in arches...even on the chandeliers! Such a pretty sight. There are also special events like table centerpiece decor by Martha Stewart and various other things. They even have free tours every half an hour to show you all the different types of flowers, explain a little bit more about where they came from and answer any questions that you might have about the flowers on display. Of course we didn't join the tour lah, going to the flower show and actually enjoying it is 'Aunty' enough :P Here are some of the photos we took inside Macys.

After we were done walking around Macys, we crossed the street to check out Herald Square. Looks like the white cherry blossoms are already in bloom.

Herald Square is actually one of my favorite parks, it's really tiny but nice :D This is what greeted us when we walked in. Soooo nice!! Looks like spring is really here!

I asked Kevin to take some photos of us in the park, since the flowers and cherry blossoms are so nice. He said he will take photos of me but he doesn't want to be in it. He says its too gay! Hahahaha! It's not gay...it's nice! Oh well, I will take pictures...even if he doesn't want to be in it :P

Here is another one!

Nice or not? Boy, spring is here at last!!!

A very Good Friday indeed!

Today is Good Friday. A lot of people have the day off and it's considered a public holiday in many countries. Even Kevin got to leave the office at around 2pm today! Woohoo! However, this holiday is a little bit different from the rest. What is Good Friday anyway? Good Friday is celebrated to remember Jesus crucifixion and death on the cross in Golgotha some two thousand years ago. Eerrr, I guess it doesn't sound all that good, right? Well, at least NOT YET. It's not the end of the story. What makes it so good is that Jesus was resurrected three days later, on Easter!! Jesus died on the cross for you and me. He didn't have to die but He did, so that we can have eternal life. That's what makes it so good!! Wanna know what else is good today?

Wellllll, our herb garden showed some signs of life! We woke up this morning to see some tiny sprouts coming out from the potting mix. Yay! How appropriate. This whole season is about new life, about Jesus dying for us and taking away our sins. Only a week ago this tiny plants were dry, hard seeds in a packet and now it's so green and alive! That reminds me of the real reason we are celebrating this season, Jesus came to earth to give us life, eternal life. :D To read more about Good Friday and about why Jesus had to die, I found a good article on Crosswalk. Just click here for the link.

Soooo, what do you think? Is Good Friday really good? Of course! Good Friday is only good because our Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ is so very good! Very very good indeed!! :D

Intrepid - Sea, Air & Space Museum (Final Part)

After finishing our Gatorade in the Mess Deck, we headed out to the Pier. The newly renovated Pier looks real good. There are loads of cafe like tables and chairs as well as park benches for museum visitors to take a break or to have a picnic lunch. They even have free WIFI so that you can access the Internet if you need to. From the Pier, we can also check out the USS Intrepid's stern.You can see how the giant spool of thread mooring lines is used to tie it up to the dock.

As we continued to walk towards the end of the Pier, we were greeted by this magnificent British Airways Concorde Alpha Delta G-BOAD. We were pretty excited to see the Concorde up close. This Concorde was built in 1976 and cost $152 million dollars! That was a LOT of money back in 1976, hmmm come to think of it, that is lot of money even for NOW! :P It's the fastest and highest flying airliner in existence, taking less than three hours to fly from New York to London (half the time of regular airliners). Do not be alarmed by the dark black smoke behind the Concorde. The black smoke was coming from a brush fire in New Jersey :D

We were kinda surprise that the Concorde is actually very very slim. It has a max cruise speed of 1,350 mph (mach 2.04) and a cruising altitude of 60,000', high enough for it's passengers to see the curvature of the earth!! It's about 203' in length and a wingspan of 83'. The Concorde is powered by four Rolls Royce/SNECMA Olympus 593 engines and is capable of covering 3,900 nautical miles without refueling. An interesting fact that we learned while we were there was the Concorde expands approximately 8 inches during flight due to friction heating. Wow! I didn't know that.

While it was in operation, more than 2.5 million passengers experienced the luxury of the Concorde Alpha Delta. It's so cool that we had a chance to actually go on board to see what it looks like inside. An average transatlantic fare was about $6,000! Wow $6,000! With $6,000, I can get five return tickets to fly home to Malaysia and back!! Another thing I noticed about the Concorde is that the windows are very very very tiny. Look at it. It just slighter larger than a passport. Something like the size of a large PDA. I guess it's so fast you won't have time to look out of the window!! :D

Upon entering the plane, we get to walk through the cabins. The Concorde can hold between 90 to 100 passengers. The seats looks really small and tight. The legroom was alright but the width of the seats were really small. Even the aisle was really tight. I would hate to be sitting in the aisle seat when the food cart is coming by :P Oh, what about if you really really need to go to the toilet and the food cart was there? Man, there is no way to go around it! Hahaha! Talking about the toilets on board, they are really small too!! If you think the regular airline toilets are small, you should checkout the Concorde's toilet.

On the way out of the plane, we had a chance to peek into the cockpit. So many buttons and knobs! The Concorde has a flight crew of two pilots, one flight engineer and six cabin crew. I guess one of the criteria for being a flight crew member, be it pilot or cabin crew is that you must be super skinny. I cannot imagine myself working in that tight and compact environment. No fatties please!

Protest from environmentalists prevented it's supersonic use over the United States and limited airport operations here. A crash upon take off in July 2000 grounded the fleet until 2001. The Concorde flew VIP passengers until 2003 and that's when both British Airways as well as Air France retired their fleets from service. Once we finished walking through the Concorde, we went to check out the little cafe/picnic area under the Concorde. You can just sit UNDER a Concorde for a cup of coffee or a snack. Isn't that wayyyy cool? Where else can you have a cup of coffee under the Concorde as well as enjoy the view of the Hudson River? Very very nice!

From the Concorde, we headed to the other side of the Pier to see the Growler submarine! We read in the museum guide book that we would be able to go aboard this diesel powered nuclear missile submarine. However, our excitement vanish when we saw a big sign saying that it was close for repairs :( Mannn, what a bummer. I read in some article online later on that it was undergoing some repairs because its hull was leaking. The Growler submarine will only be opened to the public in late May. Oh well, it was still cool to see a submarine up close. Here is a photo of the Gowler submarine as well as the 56 ft long Regulus cruise missile.

We headed to the Museum Gift Shop on the way out. There were the usual t-shirts, fridge magnets, key chains, shot glasses, post cards..ect for sale as well as Armed Forces inspired toys and books. They also had some space kits and models of ships and airplanes for children. Guess what we bought from the gift shop? :D

SPACE FOOD STICKS!! We bought one chocolate and one peanut butter flavor ($2.95 each). Yup, that's right. Astronaut food. They were actually developed as high protein energy snacks for early space missions. Kevin told me that he tried astronaut ice cream when he visited the Kennedy Space Center a long time ago when he was a kid. He said that it was yummy so we wanted to try and see if this is good too. The verdict? Boyyy, I have never eaten anything so gross before! We opened the chocolate stick first. It was a weird brown color (looks like poop) and when I tried to break it into two, it wouldn't break! It just bend into half and wouldn't break! I took a tiny bite and I was glad it was a tiny bite! It had this weird powdery texture, had some sort of plastic smell and tasted terrible! Yucks!! The peanut butter stick was even worse. It didn't taste like peanut butter at all!! Just some tasteless plastic smelling stick. Very very bad!!! :P Please remind me never to buy space food ever again. Hahaha!

Overall, we had a greeeaaat time at the Intrepid Museum. It was a very informative and interesting outing. The weather was perfect, with the sun shining brightly and a nice cool breeze was blowing. We had fun and would definitely recommend the Intrepid to anybody who is looking for something fun to do in NYC!

Also check out:

• Intrepid - Sea, Air & Space Museum (Part 1 of 3)
• Intrepid - Sea, Air & Space Museum (Part 2 of 3)