Hmmm Heather, did you soak the ham? Where I grew up Virginia ham is for holidays and country ham is for either breakfast with eggs, biscuits and red eye gravy, or its a lazy supper with the same thing, minus the eggs...
The ham that I did for Thanksgiving the year you were out here was not a country ham, it was Virginia style... maybe you just got a bad ham?
My mother grew up dirt poor and even though she didn't have to serve it we had it when I was a kid, until we all, including my dad, said no more of that spam crap. Sad to say my mom wasn't the best of cooks so she was rather cyclical thru the things she made... but her fried okra is second to none, I will give her that!
I don't use beef in my red sauces, for spaghetti or lasagne etc, I use Italian sausage and then either ground veal or ground lamb, split about evenly between the two...
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