Maine Boiled Dinner

This weekend was abnormally cold for Florida. I know everyone from up north is like boohoo but seriously...it was cold for down here. The wind was howlin and temperatures dropped into the 30s. The one cool this is that I got to wear my bright green pea coat from Old Navy I bought like a million years ago. I never get to bust that thing out.

Since it was like 60 below I decided to make a good ol' Maine boiled dinner. For those of you who don't already know..I'm from Maine. In Maine we like things that are cheap and can feed a lot of people. Also, the meal is usually cooked in a dutch oven or a crock-pot for the fancy folk (i.e beef stew with dumplings, Maine baked beans, etc). I usually side with the fancy folk and cook everything in the crock-pot. I don't have time to sit around all Sunday while my food is cooking in the dutch oven. Also, I feel uneasy leaving the house while the oven is on. I'm afraid some gas line will leak and my oven will blow up along with the rest of my apartment building. I don't even think we have gas but that's beyond the point.

So I cooked this mess in the crock-pot is what I'm trying to say. The ingredients and steps are pretty simple. I bought a half ham from Publix (with the bone still in it). Hams are confusing. I don't understand them. I mean are they already cooked or what? Come on people. Don't even get me started on corned beef. What's that all about? It looks like ham.

Anywho, by the looks of this ham..it wasn't cooked. It even had some fatty skin around it which made me feel rustic. I like to feel rustic when I'm making my food. My meat comes from Costco where it doesn't even look like it came from an animal. It's all nice and trimmed and in its own individualized vacuumed sealed bag. It may be just me but I doubt cavemen meat looked like this. Good thing I'm not a caveman. Whatever. 

Ingredients

1 halved ham (bone in)

4 peeled carrots cut in half (not split down the middle but snapped into 2 pieces, yeah?)

2 peeled sweet potatoes (chopped in half)

1 green cabbage quartered

1 tbsp Salt

2 tsp pepper

Steps

1. Place ham in the crockpot

2. Surround ham with your cut veggies

3. Pour 4 cups of water into the crockpot (water should come 3/4 quarters of the way up your meat/veggie mix)

4. Sprinkle your salt and pepper over everything

5. Cook on high for about 5 hours

6. If everything feels tender and the meat is falling apart turn the crock-pot off and let it sit until you're ready to eat