Family recipes are most treasured.  They involve a tattered recipe card and many memories.  My grandma would make Ham Loaf for many family gatherings. Celebrating Easter and Christmas as a family, sometimes there is leftover ham.  This is a perfect pork recipe for leftover ham.



Farming is a very essential industry, especially this time of the year.  I am sure you have seen farmers working in the field in the past week.  They are anxiously preparing the soil, discing, applying anhydrous ammonia, getting ready to plant.  This year will be business as usual for farmers, they will go to work every day and make sure this year's crop is planted on time.  Farmers faced many hardships last year, with a very wet spring.  They hope for drier conditions, and a larger window of opportunity to plant.  

Since my kids are now home for the remaining of the school year, they are spending more time on the farm with their grandfather.  Today they  ran outside extra early to meet one of the guys my husband use to work with at the fertilizer plant. He was delivering tanks to a field right behind our house. It had been a few years since Charlie had seen my kids, and he said they had really grown! My daughter and son have spent time learning how to operate the tractor, and discing and helping when needed.



I love seeing recipes with my grandmothers handwriting.  I asked mom to send me a picture of the recipe.  To me, it looks well used, old, and I am now curious who Martha McMahon is.  I don't think grandma missed cooking many meals for her husband and son who worked on the farm every day for lunch.  Grandma Patty only had her recipe box to turn to for recipe ideas, now we have so many more resources to discover new recipes.






If you have leftover ham, the best way to grind it, is to grind it up in a food processor.  Our family is used to preparing large meatloaf's, so I made this ham loaf bigger for our family of five. You can adjust as needed for your family.  We always make sure to have left overs.






PRINTABLE RECIPE

HAM LOAF Ingredients For Ham Loaf

How to Make Ham Loaf

1.  Mix ground pork, ground ham, milk and corn flakes and form into a loaf.
2. Place loaf in a casserole dish or loaf pan, leaving room for the sauce
3. Mix the ingredients for the sauce in a pan over medium heat. 
4. Heat on stove until mixture thickens and sugar completely dissolves.
5. Pour mixture over ham loaf and bake at 350 for one hour.
6. Internal temperature should read 160 degrees.

Chasing Saturday Pork recipes we love:
Instant Pot Bacon Ranch Potatoes
Crock Pot Pork Carnitas
Crock Pot Pulled Pork
Crock Pot Cowboy Casserole
Grilled Pork Chops
Fried Pork Chops
Crock Pot Shoups Pork BBQ Sliders
Pressure Cooker BBQ Pork Ribs
Cheesy Ham Hashbrown Casserole







This post is sponsored by Indiana Pork but all thoughts and opinions are my own.

FRIED PORK CHOPS

PRINT RECIPE

Ingredients for Fried Pork Chops

• 6-8 Bone in Pork Chops
• ½ cup of vegetable oil
• 2 cups of all purpose flour
• 1 tsp steak seasoning
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 tsp pepper
• Salt and Pepper to taste

How to make Fried Pork Chops

1. In a large skillet, heat the cooking oil over medium heat.
2. Rinse and pat pork chops with a paper towel.
3. Add flour, steak seasoning, salt and pepper to a gallon size bag.  Seal and mix all ingredients.
4. Check the skillet, make sure the oil is hot enough to cook pork chops.
5. Add one pork chop at a time to the mixture and coat, set aside on a plate.
6. Cook chops 3-4 minutes on each side, checking temperature, 160 degrees.
7. Remove from skillet and place on a clean plate.

Notes on making Fried Pork Chops

• Use an electric skillet if you have one on hand.

4-H Posts:
Top 10 Things 4-H has Taught our Family

What does 4-H Mean to You?

Pork Recipes:
Crock Pot Pulled Pork BBQ
Crock Pot Pork Carnitas
Crock Pot Shoups Pork BBQ Sliders
Pressure Cooker BBQ Pork Ribs

Just seven things? Of course, more than seven things happen when your kids are in 4-H.  I'm making mental notes of what I want to do differently in the following years. Sometimes it's picking up the phone to ask alumni, a vet, or a friend, what can I do to make this better?

I still catch myself telling  my kids, "When I was in 4-H, this is how we did it!"  I am sure I thought I worked really hard on my projects, and I bet my parents thought I could have put more work into my projects.  That's what parents do.  Push their kids, because we know what they are capable of. 

What matters is the lessons we teach our kids, and the habits that form over time.  

1. You meet a lot of families with the same interest as yours.
   
   Photography, foods, animals, or learning about lawn mower parts, you are going to find that these parents are teaching their kids the same thing you want to teach your kids.  Chores, responsibility, life skills and knowing their way around the kitchen.  Survival.  Think you did it right the first time? Let's do it again!  Knowing other families with the same interests gives you someone to talk to, with questions about feeding, picking out an animal to purchase.  I have had conversations with some 4-H moms about the best brand of flour to use for our kids foods project.
   
   
   
2. You discuss more livestock than you ever thought you would at the dinner table
   My son started talking about sows at the dinner table that I'm sure most kids don't talk about. My daughter's friends who were over for the evening learned a few things. One time my son started talking about pigs when we were out to eat.  He was helping another breeder and was beginning to learn about what it takes to breed a sow.  I thought my husband wanted to hide under the table.  
3. There are deadlines to meet, and we like to push it to the last minute.
   
   As parents, we promise ourselves we are starting projects "earlier next year"  and many can be completed in the winter time.  Time tends to get away from us, and most projects are completed, just in time for check-in on general projects day. 
   
   
   
4. When things start disappearing from the house, you know it's probably out in the barn.
   
   My kitchen ladder disappeared this spring.  I  use it to get to the top shelf in the kitchen.  I'm that short, or my cabinets are just too tall.  The ladder is being used to hang lights, and fans, and hold a door open.
   
   I'd love to hear what kind of soap is your favorite to use on pigs, we use Dawn. You know why it gets the grease out! So when we run out, the kids pull mine from the kitchen sink.
   
   We like to give pigs treats.  It's a late night snack or a way to coax them to walk out of the barn, or a little further down the lane.  All the marshmallows are currently cleared out of the pantry.
   
   
   
   
   
   
5. The family spends a lot of time in the barn.
   In the evening, we tend to gather in the alley of the barn, sitting in folding chairs, or on buckets. We watch the pigs eat, and we watch them sleep.  When we finally look at our watches, we know its late, and time for us to head to bed ourselves.
   
   
   
   
6. Learn from the Mistakes                             
   
   Last year, my son took lawn mowers for the first time.  There was a driving test and a written test.  He became so confident in driving the course, he bumped the throttle up.  When he bumped up the throttle, his speed increased.  He approached the end of the course with too much speed and knocked off the golf ball from the last post.  That lesson will always be remembered.  Learn from the mistakes so you can do better the next time.  
7. Celebrate the victories
   Celebrate the victories, no matter how small. The blue ribbon in foods, completing the tractor course. Embrace your kids and tell them you love them and are proud of them.  At the end of the week, when the family packs up the trailer and pick up the projects, you realize how fast the week went at the fair.  Take those victories and apply them to the next year.