Holiday Ham Korroke

I love korroke, but they can be pretty time consuming to make. So I find that the best time to make korokke is when you already have potatoes boiled, especially easy with leftover mashed potatoes. After all, the most time consuming and tedious part of the whole process is peeling and boiling the potatoes, mashing them, and letting them cool. Now leftover mashed potatoes often have butter or cream in them, but I found that just adds an extra creaminess to these quick croquettes.

Since some of you will be soon making a holiday dinner for Easter that often includes ham, I want you to consider setting some leftover ham aside to make these!

This recipe is adapted from Julia's Korroke, with her secret ingredient of Lipton's onion soup mix!

Pink Peppercorn Lemonade Macarons

My maternal grandfather passed away a year and a half ago.

He was the one person in my family that had never criticized or questioned where I was going in life, besides my paternal grandfather. 

Through every drama-queen fit of histrionics, normal teenage angst--oh hell, even when I shat my pants when I was around four and started bawling, he would figuratively kick my ass and then pick me back up.

When I got diagnosed with severe clinical depression at only twelve years old, he was there for me. When I dropped out of college, he was there for me.

Even though he provided the money for my college education and my withdrawal wasted a great deal of his hard-earned money, he said nothing besides reassuring me he knew I was going to go on to do great things, no matter what, and he'd always be in my corner.

His quiet, unassuming confidence in me is something I find unbearable when I'm depressed. How could I ever live up to his expectations of me? I can't even put the right words to paper (or in this less romantic digital age--fingers to keyboard) to properly describe this man, let alone accomplish anything worthwhile or lasting.

My paternal grandfather passed away a couple of months ago.