Find a great price on pork and want to stretch that grocery budget even further? Ham is an incredibly versatile item to work into your monthly menu plans. Here are ten ideas for incorporating "stretched" ham at home.

1. Breakfast Pizza - This stuff is really yummy. Just pour on raw scrambled eggs instead of tomato sauce. Add chopped bits of left over ham, onions, and other items you might normally throw in an omelet, such as green peppers. Voila! Pizza for breakfast. It takes about the usual time to bake as a regular pizza would. Don't forget the cheese!
2. Carbonara - Ham, eggs and dairy to the rescue again. This time with pasta. Yeah, baby!
3. Quiche - This is a very elegant and affordable dish to serve either hot or cold. Add a crisp salad and your favorite table wine. Looking to cut calories? Skip the pastry crust and call it a frittata.
4. Breakfast Fried Rice - Scramble up some eggs, add some left over rice, diced ham, sliced green onions and anything else that grabs you (like garlic!).Cook like you would regular fried rice. Serve with soy sauce, or my favorite, Tobasco.
5. Sliced Cold With Side Dishes - Beans, cole slaw, macaroni salad . . . take your pick.
6. Baked Ham and Potato Scallop - Growing up in New England, we ate this quite a bit. Particularly since Maine is a big potato state. Very affordable, and can be made in one dish for easy clean up.
7. Soup - I like ham and bean in a tomato broth with vegetables, but I'm sure there are tons of other options out there to suit a variety of tastes.
8. Ham, Vegetable and Cheese Calzones - These are very tasty, particularly with broccoli. My mother-in-law does something similar with frozen bread dough. She skips the sauce and just puts those three ingredients in the middle and bakes up the loaf in a regular bread pan. She calls it "stuffed bread" and it's one of my husband's favorite family lunches.
9. Omelets - Some left over ham, veggies and cheese tossed in with an omelet makes a killer brunch item or lazy weekend breakfast.
10. Sandwich Filling - Mix up chopped ham with a little hard boiled egg and your favorite dressing and seasoning. You're all set for a brown bag lunch.

As with the previous post regarding what to do with large bags of chicken legs, the trick here is to bake up a large ham in advance, preferrably for dinner so you don't have an extra mess to clean up. Break the left over ham down into smaller freezer bags and use for the various ideas above when it's convenient for you.

Photo by RBerteig