Arnold Zwicky's Blog

That’s the lede: I have about two pounds of KCH — from a shipment that supplied me with very satisfying nostalgia for Easter but is way more than I can use myself, especially since I’m supposed to be severely restricting my intake of salt and fats. So I’m giving away the KCH  to good (local) homes.

Now, a reprise of the KCH story. And then the details of the offer.

Background. From my 4/9/23 posting “Kentucky country ham”:

country ham. From Wiikipedia:

Country ham is a variety of heavily salted ham preserved by curing and smoking, associated with the cuisine of the Southern United States.

… [Country hams are] aged for several months to 3 years, depending on the fat content of the meat

… for me KCH comes with intensely warm memories of Ann [Daingerfield (Zwicky)] …  Ham and melted cheese sandwiches — which the Broadbent people explicitly suggest as a use for their thin slices of KCH — are decidedly non-traditional, especially on toasted slices of Dave’s Killer Organic Bread … , of which I happen to be fond

From my comment on that posting:

After [Easter] lunch … Wow, that stuff is the real deal. Drier and more brittle than the ham in the photo; handling it tends to make it shatter into totally yummy shards. (It’s also surprisingly greasy, so handling it is tricky.)

What I ended up doing was two open-faced sandwiches: slice of killer toast, half-slice of ham, thick layer of extra sharp white cheddar, another half-slice of ham, zapped [in the microwave] for a minute and a half. The ham and the cheese really work beautifully together; and the killer bread’s crunchy texture was perfect. I don’t think I’d add anything to the ham and cheese, though something green and somewhat bitter on the side, like arugula, would be a nice contrast.

Now I still have most of 2 lbs of the ham, which I estimate could feed 15 or 20 people. But I eat my meals alone and don’t get visitors, so I could be eating ham sandwiches for a long time.

So a few days later I created a really fine salad of shredded greens, heavy on kale, and lots of crumbled KCH (with the strips of fat cut away). Excellent, but a lot of trouble.

But then I confronted the fact that these meals were just an exercise in nostalgia, and I really needed to find takers for the remainder (most of the original order).

The offer. Backdrop: I’m housebound (in downtown Palo Alto CA) and have no means of transportation (except for medical appointments). So I’m not prepared to ship stuff; you have to pick up the KCH at my house (information below).

I’m sending this out to my blog, with a link on Facebook. That will reach some, but far from all, of my local acquaintances. (It will reach a few Stanford people, but only those following me on this blog or Facebook; there’s a department mailing list that hits pretty much everybody connected with Stanford Linguistics, but it’s for department business, not social and personal matters like this.)

I’m prepared to give away small amounts at a time, so long as you pick it up. After a week or so, I will declare the offer over and put the remainder in the garbage. ☹️

To ask for some KCH, e-mail me at

arnold dot zwicky at-sign gmail dor com

Please do not send messages by some other scheme.(In particular, not as a comment on this posting or as a Facebook message.)

Once you’ve asked, I’ll give you directions to my (ground-floor, open-to-the-street) condo, directly across Ramona St. from the parking lot of the downtown Palo Alto library.

This entry was posted on April 24, 2023 at 11:10 am and is filed under Language and food, My life, Offers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.