LA DOLCE VITA

Jorga Fox walks like a man. Namely George W. Bush. Arms in a quick-draw crook, legs bowed and as Texas as T-Bone. I decided this after my third hour of CSI: Las Vegas. I also decided Gil Grissom is scarier than a middle Georgian enumerating "merits" of Unabomber or Tim McVeigh. Were it not for uncut ham, water, juniper, allspice, mustard, cloves, garlic, onions, I would not be narcotizing with Bruckheimer's Technicolor holistic. Capper is a plate of boiled ham begging for English mustard hours later with scant effort. Most difficult part is pulling it from its coooking liquid. The meat and bone buoy schlupping about...

Careful carving. Don't want to waste any of this wonderfully fragrant pink meat. Save the cooking liquid and turn it into soup. Hambone goes into cooking liquid. Add split peas, lentils. Potato soup would be in order if it weren't Indian summer. Cold or hot is your only perdicament. Much like Roast Beef, ham tastes better cold, once its had the time to reflect, settle. Accompaniment must be as fundamental: Cabbage, sauerkraut, brussells sprouts, swede, mash, boiled new potatoes in their jackets, braised chickory, purslane, watercress, dandelion. Pick one. Add bacon to it.

Final step is condiment choice. Green sauce, horseradish, Branston pickle, piccallili, or mustard - dijon or English - is the question. The answer reamins up to you. But there's nothing quite like a big porky bite of ham draped in Colman's mustard. Tae-bo for the sinuses. Colman's isn't a condiment; it's fucking sport. I often wonder why people fuss over dinner parties so much when the proper choice for more than a few, less than many, would be boiled ham. Maybe if we weren't inundated with so much bullshit for the wealth of our waking hours, simple, good things would make good, simple sense again. A glass of something beery, cheery. To: La dolce vita.