Another Baked Virginia Ham and More Roasted Carrots!

Well, I've had my cookbook for several weeks now and I'm just now getting around to cooking something. You see, I do not cook...so this whole experience should be a real challenge for me! My husband has been the family cook since the day we got married...I'm a lucky girl! Since leaving my job as a pharmacist to stay at home with our new baby boy (he's 6 weeks old), I promised myself (and the hubby) that I would start cooking more. It only makes sense, right? Right... Anyway, I am still adjusting to motherhood so I can't guarantee a deep commitment to this cooking business, but I am going to give it a shot!

For my first attempt, I chose to make the Baked Virginia Ham on page 119. Shannon already made this, so I basically followed her lead and bought a pre-sliced ham from HEB that weighed 2.5 lbs. I also halved the remaining ingredients...or so I thought! I actually forgot to use half of the orange zest...oops!! Our ham was very orangey (sp?) so I really wasn't too crazy about it. I think the hubby was on the same page as me. It was edible, though and we did eat the leftovers for lunch today. I wonder if I would have liked it more had I used less zest. Hmm? Also, I did not use fresh garlic...we had some minced garlic in the fridge so I used that to make things easier...don't know if that changed anything significantly. It says to bake for 1 hour, but I think it could have gone longer to brown the glaze even more. The recipe calls for mango chutney and I have no idea what that is. It looked weird. I will say that this recipe is very easy since all you do is mix everything in the food processor, pour it over the ham, and bake it.

For our side, I made the tried and true Roasted Carrots from page 149. I am not a fan of cooked carrots, but I really like these. They were just crisp enough and not too mushy like cooked carrots normally are. This was my first time using kosher salt to cook anything, but I notice that most of Ina's recipes call for it so I am prepared to cook the rest of the book now!


Here are my pictures: