What I ate after my run – Honey Roasted Carrots with Ham

With two teenage sons, there is a lot of carnivorous cooking in my house. My sons expect some sort of animal at every meal. This means that I usually have some sort of leftover meat that I need to deal with the next day. Sandwiches: done. Burritos: done. Chicken salad: done. Feed it to the dog: done.

There is one meat, though, that is so easy to deal with that my family rarely hears me complaining (okay, this is a lie because I can always find something to complain about), and that is ham. Leftover ham is a cook’s boondoggle. You can mix it into mac and cheese, put it on a pizza with some pineapple, make awesome paninis, and mix it up with linguine, creme fraiche, arugula, lemon and parmesan for an easy, zazzy lunch.

But one of my favorite things to do with leftover ham is toss it in with roasting vegetables. Like bacon, the ham adds great depth to any veggie dish and gives your greens, oranges or yellows a big POW of protein. Perfect for a post run snack.

This morning, I did 14 miles with 1/4 mile intervals. I really didn’t need, or feel like, speedwork, but I was pressed for time and this makes the miles go much faster. Sad excuse for speedwork, but true. Alas, when I was done with my speedwork, I also needed a quick snack, so I turned the oven to 400 degrees, tossed the carrots with olive oil, salt, a spoonful of raw honey and some chile powder (dried chiles, cumin, corriander, onion salt, garlic) and took the dog for a quick walk. When I got back, I tossed in pieces of ham and stuck the pan back in the oven for another 5 minutes. Easy peasy and it covered all the recovery bases. And it used up leftovers. And it gave me some veggies.

Epilogue. I set the bowl down after taking the pictures. Spencer came down, saw the bowl, didn’t see me (I was upstairs), and polished it all off. I only got a few bites, but I swear it was delicious.

Tagged as: Honey Roasted Carrots with Ham, recovery meal