If You Like Beef on Twinkies You Will Love Ham In Pound Cake

I stopped by the bakery a couple of days ago to purchase a loaf of sliced bread (I will tell you all about the difference between sliced bread and almost sliced bread soon). The lady in the bakery who followed me around and tried to sell me one of every item in the store pointed out to me the cost of the loaf of bread. In order to make it a nice round number I proceeded to look around for a sweet treat to reward myself for the successful day of locating my ATM card and refilling my minutes on the cell phone with minimal assistance. The minimal assistance was a call to an English speaking friend who suggested that I hold my money in one hand and my cell phone in the other and hope that the people at the cell phone place could figure out the rest. He said it usually worked for him, and his advice worked like a charm for me as well, but back to my story. I located a small pound cake looking item and it made my purchase a nice even number so I grabbed it. The helpful lady at the bakery congratulated me on such a wise purchase and my ability to calculate numbers in a foreign language in such a way as to not require change. That is more of a transliteration of what she said than an actual word for word translation by the way.

I got my sweet treat home and unwrapped it to discover that there were small chunks of ham on top. Imagine one of those square cubes of ham that are popular at salad bars sliced into about five pieces and you will get the picture of what was on the pound cake.

I am way past the point of being surprised by what foods are combined here, so this was not shocking. What I would like to know is how these combinations happen to begin with. I have a theory. A family matriarch is teaching her daughter how to cook pound cake. She tells her the ingredients one at a time. Flour….Sugar…..Eggs…..Milk (from a bag)….. from the other room, her husband yells, “What is for supper?” The daughter busy stirring does not hear the question, but the family matriarch does and replies ham. The daughter not questioning the strange ingredient throws the ham in the batter and continues to stir. 700 years later, I purchase a pound cake at the bakery with ham in it. Salty cured meats go nicely with the sweetness of pound cake.

For bragging rights: Where is the strangest place you have ever found ham?