A young couple had just got married and to celebrate they bought a large ham.They were a liberated couple who did the cooking together but the husband was rather shocked to see his new wife cutting off both ends of good meat before they started cooking it.
He said: “Why are you doing that?”
She said: “I don’t know, this is the way my mother always prepares a ham.”
The man was intrigued and next time they were around at the in-laws place, he said to his mother-in-law:
“Tell me, why do you cut off both ends of a ham before cooking it?”
She said: “I don't know, that’s the way my mother always cooked a ham.”
By this time the young man was really curious and the next time they were at grandma’s place, he asked her the same question:
“Grandma, why do you cut off both ends of a ham before cooking it?”
And she said, “Oh, the answer to that is very simple.....
That’s the only way it will fit in my pan!”
Many things starts out with a specific purpose, but over the years they become routine until we are just going through the motions without the slightest idea of what we are doing and why we are doing them.
Geoff Pound
Image: Ham fitting in the pan.