This One is Going to Be Sweet!

Sticky Ham Balls Transcript

I'm excited to make today's recipe you know I had to get out my handy-dandy meat grinder for this one a meat grinder really what kind of meat did you have to grind what are we making well I don't want to give anything away so let's just say that this dish will definitely stick to your ribs ooh

welcome to mom's wooden spoon get your apron on and your fanny flicker ready as we cook up some nostalgia ooh yummy it's Kristen and it's Carrie happy new year well today this sticky ham ball recipe comes from the December 28 1981 Mary's Memo oh nice yep so unlike us Mary got the new year recipe out before new year she did so this time we're going to celebrate the new year after the new year with an appetizer that Mary recommended for a very fine new year's party in 1981 fantastic and so this recipe doesn't have a ton of ingredients but we decided to cut it in half because this recipe sticky ham balls has a lot of meat a lot of pork and a lot of meat yes like so we're giving you this recipe for the parties you may be having later this year yep and if you don't cut the recipe in half you need to be having a party yes a giant party it's four pounds of meat right like either I hope you have a huge extended family and they are all coming over or you are just an insanely sociable creature who has unlimited number of friends but if you're like me and you have two friends and four family members right this you need to halve this sucker yes so we've cut it in half so we're going to be using a pound of ground pork a pound of ground ham which I groundeded it myself hey I'm so proud of myself and we're using graham cracker crumbs eggs milk tomato soup and I was a good girl I got the Campbell's tomato soup of course because it's the best it really is good and then brown sugar lots and lots of brown sugar some vinegar and some dry mustard so I predict that sticky ham balls will not only be sticky but they're also going to be very sweet oh yeah very very sweet and we were just talking about this before we hit record is that so we've got the sugar we have ham which can kind of be like a salty sweet you've got the tomato soup which is a little bit sweet and graham cracker crumbs that's really sweet sweet ooh this will be interesting we are going to have Carrie mix up the meat product I do not love putting my hands into the raw meat so she's going to squish the meat up with the graham cracker crumbs eggs and milk and mix thoroughly and I am going to mix up the brown sugar and the soup vinegar and dry mustard until smooth that sounds good so I have a huge pot of meat you do ooh she's getting her hands in there you might hear some squishy sounds and I'm opening up the tomato soup right now if Kristen starts to scream it's because I took my meaty fingers and threatened her with them do not touch me with those all right so I popped the top on this tomato soup and Carrie I'm using a skinny spatula to get the soup out because the last one I ruined your last spatula you did you cut the spatula

I kept eating what we made and thinking I'm gonna get a little plastic bit in my food but I did not good good so this would be an awesome recipe to use up leftover Christmas ham if that is how your family eats oh that's genius on  Christmas yes and so I was thinking this really really beats some of the other ways you could possibly use up Christmas ham in the 1980s and 1970s there was a recipe I found online that was where you take bananas you wrap Carrie keeps I have meaty hands and so my glasses are falling down I like she keep pushing pushing her glasses up with her side of her arm and I got the giggles so bad oh my goodness I think what you're trying to say is sticky ham balls sound better than meat wrapped around bananas and drizzled drizzled with hollandaise and then you bake them what yeah yeah it was a recipe I found online that was very much a a 70s recipe so 1981 is pretty close to the 70s so horrifying it is  it's all over the internet because other people were horrified as well some people made it if you guys want to look it up it's called ham and bananas hollandaise yes and you bake it and then you add the hollandaise at the last minute oh that's bad okay so 1981 obviously the year that this recipe originated had some other fabulous recipes um not necessarily ham based one of them that they were famous for in 1981 because Betty Crocker published it in a recipe book in 1981 uh it apparently had been kind of making the rounds in the 70s is something you might want to consider making but then once Betty you know published it it became all the rage and it is called a holiday party loaf so I mean what could be better than a party loaf I mean and if it happens to have ham in it and it is very Ohio thing does it have ham in it it could oh so basically you as a hostess you would want to build a sandwich a multi-level sandwich so let's say a Dagwood if you want a dig a Scooby sandwich oh my gosh and you know what when you try to eat those you might do like your husband doesn't get the head shakes when you open your mouth so wide that your head goes rrrrrrrrr because unfortunately unlike a snake he cannot hinge his jaw so anyway so you take this multi-layer sandwich that you ever so carefully build I am sure that you could include some ham if you wanted yes and then you quote frost your sandwich with the cream cheese you make a sandwich and you frost it with cream cheese ooh do you decorate it like a cake then with like olives and stuff I mean as a good hostess of 1981 why would you not I wonder if you could use like hot dog bits ooh that would look pretty that would make things very pretty ooh I wonder if you could cut a hot dog to look like a pretty pretty flower ooh we know that that's way more difficult we have tried that before it is not easy as it appears no but yeah so anyway so and you frost that sucker with the cream cheese decorate it however your little hostess heart desires and voila a delicious holiday party loaf for all of your guests Carrie I dare you to try that this holiday season the faces on your friends when you bring that out oh my gosh my uh company holiday party when we all get a dish I should bring a holiday loaf I dare you oh that's tempting it's very tempting that would be oh 

I found a little piece of like ham skin in the loaf in the mix and so I wanted to get it out of here so I tossed it into the sink but first banked it off of Kristen's arm right into the sink two points woo hoo I'll tell you what I don't know if you guys noticed that was real quiet for a bit I had to keep checking the recipe it calls for a half a cup of vinegar I kept looking is that a teaspoon a half a cup of vinegar well maybe that's to help cut the yes sugar yes it you know now that we've mentioned that actually may be a positive oh I think it will be kind of like a um sweet and sour type so yes yes but man I checked and I checked you were talking and my face was buried in Mary's Memo going good lord is that a half a cup of vinegar that's a lot of vinegar oh my goodness well the sauce is made up and so now I think what we have to do is start making the meatballs yes we do so my hands are still covered in meat juice uh Kristen would you mind grabbing the container that we're going to put the balls in I will we have to put it in a 9 by 13 inch pan and if you make the full recipe you have to have two 9 bay 13 inch pans we'll just grab the one and we'll start making the meatballs all right yeah and I wanted to share that since again this recipe is new year 1981 yes um 1981 was the launch year of MTV so new year was their very first MTV rock and roll ball new year's eve party and so in my brain I'm like well I need to find out like who was at this well of course right and it was uh singers that I've never heard of because well it was their launch year yeah and it wasn't until the second year that it really started to get some good headliners and it was apparently held in some obscure little New York City hotel you're kidding in a tiny ball room who who came nobody that's right they were nobody at that point do you know the very first song that was played on MTV I should is it video killed the radio star you got it I don't know that that song came out 1981 I don't think it did I think they just it was the perfect choice it was the perfect choice yeah so yeah let me go back to the ham balls here for just a sec how big are the balls well you know if you're eating a little appetizer it needs to be a one bite or two at most yeah and if you're going to put it on a toothpick then two bites would be bad because part of it would fall off I think so what do you think just take a little bite pre-planning on the two bite it is all yeah I think that looks good unlike my husband you don't want to have to try and unhinge your jaw you do not to well you know what you know what 1981 new years was also it was the 10-year anniversary of Dick Clark's rockin" new year's eve and until then as far as I understand like there was really no competition for Dick Clark no MTV it was kind of bold in like hey we're gonna take on Dick the king of new year's celebrations yeah they took him on and I don't think that they were that successful not the first year I mean it got the ball the ball the sticky ham ball rolling it actually was the first year that they did instead of a ball drop in New York City they did a big apple oh that's cool yeah it was their whole promotion of I love New York and they did it for like many years after that the apple the dropping the apple I remember the apple do you I do yeah and so the the he had some co-hosts in Hollywood okay and they were Tom Wopat oh my gosh Luke Duke oh yes yes that's right yeah yeah not Bo Duke not my favorite Duke when I was a kid no I liked blondy Bo I did like Bo Duke he was so cool and then Charlene Tilton do you remember what she was from not a clue she was on Dallas see I never never saw Dallas no as a kid we didn't watch that right now we didn't watch that much but Tom Wopat he even sang I don't know I didn't know he sang he did yeah I knew that Bo Duke sang yes yes but no I think Tom Wopat has actually been on Broadway oh he's like a real live good singer yes so he's sang a song it was fine but they had other uh really great guests they had Barry Manilow he was singing It's Just Another New Year's Eve they had Rick James super freak super freak nice super freaky and they had the Four Tops oh awesome so that was great oh yeah definitely I think far superior to MTV's I think so because they also had Rick Springfield yes do you know why yes because Rick Springfield had one of the number one songs of all of 1981 okay so was it there's two was it Jesse's Girl or it was I've done everything for you you've done nothing for me uh no it's Jesse's Girl I didn't know what the other one was you made me sing that whole song I did no it was Jessie's Girl the best it was really good and of course he played Dr Noah Drake on General Hospital yes I was not a General Hospital fan of course I mean who didn't get pulled into the Luke and Laura saga that's true I mean that was everywhere I think the whole world was talking about that yes um I wasn't either I was a General Hospital no I just said that no you weren't you were a Guiding Light I was Guiding Light girl and you got me addicted to Guiding Light do you remember Lujac and Beth oh I do I really remember Hope and Bo oh Hope and Bo yeah you don't remember Hope and Bo but I remember Reva and Josh oh yes remember Reva married Josh's brother and she married his dad that's creeps that's creepola oh Reva you know what hey Carrie what yeah there was no Hope and Bo they were on a different they were not on Guiding Light I didn't think so they were on Days of Our Lives

okay that makes more sense I'm like I don't remember Hope and Bo but my friend got me sorry um hooked on Days of our Lives I was like two for oh my goodness yeah you know what you know why I really liked Guiding Light is because our grandma used to listen to it when it was a radio show no yes oh that's so cool and I thought that was really cool but you know Carrie we are not even halfway done and this 9x13 pan is filled I I think we need to mush these bad boys together I think even squishing them closer isn't going to make a difference I think they can stack on top because part of what we're going to do later is baste them all right I'm moving these over all right still think that's not lets jam these bad boys together yeah they are fitting a lot better now excellent yeah just shove them together yeah well folks we have probably space for maybe four or five more meatballs and they will fit Carrie is gonna force them in here so where there's a will there's a way so graham crackers are a part of this recipe yes and it brought up a childhood memory for me with graham crackers I don't know if you know what we're talking about I feel like I'm right on with you but lets see where you go with this

you know we would get up before our parents would on the weekends yeah yeah and our mom went as far as setting out um a bowl of pre-poured cereal for us because they didn't want to get up right and it was the 70s and you you didn't do that kind of thing your kids would just get up they'd sit there for almost the whole morning just watching cartoons yeah but we got it in our heads that it would be a really great idea to make breakfast in bed because who doesn't love breakfast in bed right and we weren't capable of really cooking anything no so we we would take graham crackers yes we would and we would spread them with frosting from a can out of the fridge so it was hard as a rock yep so the only way to spread it was to make that frosting super thick super thick yeah because it was hard and then we would find mom's sprinkles from her cake decorating stuff because they're gorgeous yes and maybe we'd put on a maraschino cherry of course we would for the color I mean what screams party if not a maraschino cherry topper yes and we would take those to mom and dad and they would act so delighted and I didn't find out until later that they would ask us to go get them a napkin and they'd flush it down the toilet while we were gone what I knew I knew and so we'd come back and they were like oh we ate the whole thing it was so good we couldn't help ourselves which was cute but it certainly didn't get them out of having it every weekend every weekend if you made something like that for your parents we would love to hear from you so I think what Kristen is saying is what food horrors yes did you inflict upon your parents out of love out of love we loved them so much we wanted to give them a delicious breakfast treat that would put them into diabetic comas I was just going to say diabetes on a cracker

well these meatballs are ready we got every single one squished in there except for the one that Carrie stole my spot and it's sad I'm gonna put it right in the middle so it's like a little nose on the top we're going to pop those into the oven we've already preheated the oven to 325 those have to go in and we might want to put the sauce on top just saying oh yeah they they're just ham balls without the uh sauce that would not make them sticky ham balls if we didn't put in this sauce with it they would be dry ham balls yes all right so I'm going to pour this in and then I believe we have to baste these throughout the cooking process a couple of times like every 15 minutes and all right I hope my little guy on the top doesn't get too browned or dry or dried out I don't I can't imagine how they're going to get dry this is like a gallon of sweet and sticky sauce well they are sticky ham balls that's right well we're going to pop these in the oven all right we'll talk to you in a bit okay the sticky ham balls are out of the oven and they actually sound sticky they do um so we basted them a couple of times I actually got out the good old turkey baster because they were so crammed in there I don't think there was any way I could have taken a spoon in and kind of gotten the sauce up and basted it no and the basting is really very important it really is it made a huge difference on the coating on the top of those sticky ham balls which looks sticky they smell sweet and vinegary yes like a sweet and sour sauce on them but they are like burning hot lava oh yes they are we need to wait a bit while they cool I don't think any amount of pooching will save us on this one no pooching and I think we may even have to pooch them once they've been out of this dish for a while yeah do you want to move them out of the dish because I have a 1981 uh moment ooh that I wanted to share of course talk to me girl talk to me okay I'm so excited about this moment so 1981 was the year that Prince Charles and Princess Diana were married oh my gosh my friend Stephanie was so excited about that she loved it I was so excited about that I remember getting up late at night to watch the wedding oh my gosh was it late at night or was it early in the morning to me it was late at night but it probably was early in the morning yeah we'll have to look up what the time difference is it's early in the morning and I know this oh because I was so enamored being a part of that royal wedding that I have not missed one since I remember Stephanie and I preparing for this I had her over for a tea party yes and I made tea yeah I use the hot water from the coffee maker because if you just don't have the grounds in there you can just make hot water right well I didn't double check that there were no grounds and so I made the tea and we both tasted it and I was like oh oh and Stephanie was so sweet she goes it's okay we'll just call it coffee tea coffee tea I remember the dress oh the dress I loved that dress the poofy sleeves and the train and it just kept coming and coming yeah for me that is just a highlight of a childhood memory how special that wedding was just outstanding well Carrie look at these meatballs they are they're beautiful they're really sticky on the top they are and then the sauce is a little more liquidy than I thought it would be but it's very nice it is we are going to have a wonderful new year's celebration right here in my kitchen well in true new year's eve celebration though we may be a couple days late we have some champagne to celebrate with we have our new year's eve party horns Kristen's going to pop the champagne wait a minute this one's very different there's no cork I'm twisting yeah it's a twist off it's totally a twist off there we go oh listen that was fancy that was a nice hiss oh this is so pretty and this champagne is thanks to my friend Elaine thank you Elaine I'm so excited I did not have any champagne on new year's eve so this is even better it is I'm just going to polish off the bottle here in both of these glasses and Carrie's going to take a picture of our beautiful celebration with sticky ham balls champagne we have our little tootin horns our rootin and tootin horns here which Carrie used to love as a child I did now I personally had an affinity for the ones that flipped out I knew that and I looked for those but they didn't have any new year's eve ones they just had birthday party ones but she loved it we have home videos of Carrie just walking around at a party that thing out of her in her mouth just going twip twip it would roll out and then roll back in I used to get them in my stockings oh she loved em it really was yes pretty nice all right okay so I think that we're ready to give the ham balls a try do you want me to go first because you're afraid how hot it is yes really but let's each grab a champagne just in case and let's toast this new year okay all right here's to a wonderful new year we hope all our listeners have a fantastic year filled with happiness and lots of retro goodies oh I like it let's try the champagne oh that's delicious thank you Elaine oh it's very nice not too sweet a little dry deliciously bubbly perfect for ham balls it is all right all right so grab my handy dandy little ham ball uh Kristen if you would like to tell us what number three on the 1981 song countdown is uh we can count down to the top song as we eat our ham balls oh we can number three was I'm not gonna tell you I'm not gonna tell you I told Carrie we needed to make them into one bite one bite so you can pop the whole thing in your mouth and Carrie goes oh you can just bite it carefully well she just took a bite the ham ball rolled the rest of it rolled off she caught it good catch I don't know what she's talking about she's just making all of that up to make herself look good I took one bite it stayed perfectly intact on the little toothpick holding it she's a liar that's hilarious was it molten hot lava it was not it was actually a nice warm temperature and it was pretty good this sauce is delicious really so that much vinegar was okay and that much brown sugar was also okay it is not near as sweet as I had anticipated and the basting it was key I think because it has this nice sticky top to it right top to it from the basting it was really really good well I'm going to pop mine in my mouth all at the same time while you talk about number three I'm gonna give you the top three countdown because that ham ball's big enough that Kristen's going to be chomping on it for a minute yes I will be so in our countdown number three is

Lady by Kenny Rogers number two and this is one of my childhood favorites was Endless Love by Diana Ross and Lionel Richie and I'm pretty sure it was in a movie I want to say it was in the movie where the girl is an ice skater and then there's no a tear no that's not it Ice Castles Endless Love was not enough that's a shame that was please don't let this feeling end oh you're right everything I want to be okay so number one is Betty Davis Eyes oh that's a great song it was a good year for music really good yes and speaking of Betty Davis Eyes these balls that are about the size of an eyeball

worst segue ever oh it's that sip of champagne Carrie I'm sorry I'm a lightweight went straight to her head oh my gosh yeah anyway Betty Davis eyes good song meatballs actually very tasty and not too sickening sweet no not one bit they're soft they're softer than I thought they would be I thought they'd be really really firm I am wondering that if as they continue to cool they might get a little bit firmer yeah the middle was soft really tender yeah like I said if you're having just a normal sized gathering half of this is perfect it's easy to cut in half yes and if you're having a really large one just do the whole recipe it'll feed a crowd I think that there was a one more thing that we wanted to say to all of our listeners and that is

happy new year well that's it for this episode if you would like to read our accompanying blog see pictures of the delicious sticky ham balls we cooked today see a copy of the original Mary's Memo recipe and much more just head on over to momswoodenspoon.com if you enjoyed today's podcast please let others know about us if you don't we may have to start the new year off with grabbing our wooden spoon

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