the way to a man's heart

The silly old cliche is that the way to a man's heart is through his stomach. And the reason stupid cliches exist is because THAT IS THE TRUEST STATEMENT OF ALL TIME.

Last night I came home and Brit's mom surprised me with a full Thanksgiving-style dinner from HoneyBaked Ham.

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There are some brands that have a nice name and logo and even reputation that make you think this is something special. Omaha Steaks comes to mind. But once you order, you're like "why did I have meat shipped through the mail?" These aren't anything special. And they're really expensive.

Somewhat related, I've never even tried those take & bake pizza places. They charge as much as a pizzeria but still want me to cook it. Look, I'm either going to pay 4 bucks and get a frozen pizza or pay 9 bucks and get a hot pizzeria pizza.

Anyways. So if you've never had HoneyBaked Ham, you might think it fits into one of this camps. It is fairly expensive. How good could it be?

Really damn good is the answer.

I walked in the door and was greeted with the smell of Thanksgiving. In the oven were 5 side dishes: mac & cheese, broccoli rice casserole, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, and whole green bean casserole.

In the fridge was a spiral cut, honey-glazed ham and a sliced honey-glazed turkey breast.

And there were fancy egg buns, and three-pepper mayo as well.

The meat is awesome. Super-premium. The honey glaze adds a nice crunch on the outside.

But I had never had the sides before. The sweet potatoes were my favorite. Crunchy baked brown sugar topping, full of flavor. The mac & cheese was wonderful as expected. The surprise was how good the broccoli rice dish was. I don't even like broccoli. But this was awesome.

So yeah. I'm all about home-cooking at Thanksgiving. But if someone sneaked in the sweet potatoes and broccoli rice casserole on our table, I would not complain.