How you are supposed to cook a ham.

When a customer was coming over, Cindy bought a ham, cut it in half then put it in the oven. She likes to cook for a hobby so I’m sure she believes this gives it a better flavor or something. One day I asked her why she did that before she cooked it and she said “well, you do, why do you do it?” I told her it was how my mom did it, and even my grandmother. After I had asked her I remembered that I had asked my mother the same thing, she told me it was because when she was little, her mother had to cut the ham in half to cook it because it wouldn’t fit in the small oven any other way.

I had never heard this before until one day in folklore class, many people mentioned knowing that people in their family did this too. When I spoke to my grandmother and she was regailing me with stories, she mentioned this. I laughed because I now recognized it, but I also thought I should add this to my folklore collection because everybody else talking about it used a roast and my grandma specifically said they did this when they cooked hams; a little variation.