Ham

You might think that this story is about prosciutto from Italy. It's not. It's about money. So, first, let's talk about BMWs. A BMW 325 with a few options lists for about $28,000 and weighs 2,811 pounds. Which means a BMW 325 costs $10 a pound. In Philadelphia, imported Italian prosciutto - prosciutto di Parma - sells for $22 a pound, more than twice as much as a BMW 325. Now to the point: Is the imported prosciutto worth $12 a pound more than the best domestic? If you spend your money stupidly, it's not going to matter; you'll shell out the extra bucks just for status.

Cooking style has changed a good bit around our house in the past few years, largely because there are no longer as many people around the table at dinner time. We used to be a clan of four or six or eight, what with parents and children and hungry friends of children. Today, we are usually only two or three, except on special occasions when we may be as many as 20. Anyway, most of the time we're not as many around the table as once we were. Now you might think that fewer people around the table would have changed my wife's shopping habits.

Most children drift off to sleep each Christmas Eve against their wills, trying as best they can to stay awake to hear Santa and his reindeer arrive. Somehow these youngsters never manage to keep their eyes open long enough to hear Santa's sleigh bells, and the most they can hope for is to rise at dawn to find their gifts piled beneath the tree. In the last three years, West Deptford resident Charles Sketchley and members of the Gloucester County Amateur Radio Club have changed that tradition for some children.

If you've ever dreamed of doing a job that is unusual, intensive, tasty, aromatic and, OK, hellish - pick a ham. I should know. Some weeks, I pick at least 30 pounds of ham. By "pick" I don't mean "select. " That's easy compared to what I do. My youngest son, Steven Gemperlein, owns Porky's Smokehouse, a deli/restaurant north of Pittsburgh where he smokes hams, turkeys and cheese. Patrons adore his hams and sandwiches with picked ham doused in pungent barbecue sauce. Ham barbecue sandwiches have a bit of history in my family.

The Useful Pig (HarperCollins, $22.95) is one of the finest primers on pork to come along in quite a while. It also has 122 recipes that showcase the pig's versatility and use around the globe. Roberta Wolfe Smoler, an accomplished home cook and cookbook author, has put together a collection of exciting recipes that makes "The Other White Meat" more than just a clever slogan. She has international standards - such as Catfish With Pork Strips and Vietnamese Sauce, Grilled Pork Chinese Style, Pork Chili, and Choucroute Garnie - as well as more familiar dishes such as Pork Chops With Apples and Cream, and Roast Suckling Pig With Herb Basting Sauce.

4 tablespoons unsalted butter (1/2 stick) 1/4 cup all-purpose flour 4 cups milk (whole or low-fat, not fat-free) 12 ounces Gruyere, finely grated 1 pound ham (smoked, wet-cured), chopped 1 (9-ounce) package frozen artichoke hearts, thawed and squeezed to remove excess moisture 1 tablespoon Dijon mustard 1 tablespoon mango chutney 1 tablespoon minced tarragon leaves or 1 1/2 teaspoon dried tarragon 12 ounces dried ziti, cooked and drained according to package directions 1 ounce finely grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese Position rack in the center of the oven and preheat to 350 degrees.

Roland P. Huestis, 90, an engineer and resident of Havertown for 45 years, died Wednesday in his home. Mr. Huestis was born in Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada, and moved to the United States when he was 18. While serving in the Army, he learned a trade he would keep his entire life: radio operation. For more than 50 years, Mr. Huestis was an avid ham radio operator, said his wife of 61 years, Dore M. Huestis. He maintained communication through his radio with people around the world.

Whether they're invading wavelengths in a foreign country or chatting with their buddies two blocks away, amateur radio operators frequently like to live up to their nickname: ham operators. But all that toying on the airwaves can come in handy during serious times. Take last fall, when Hurricane Hugo's 140 m.p.h. winds ravaged the Caribbean, leaving an estimated 50,000 homeless and leaving several areas in Puerto Rico without electricity or phone lines. A few hours after the storm surged north toward the United States, amateur radio operator Jeff "N4CST" Duncan, earphones on and microphone in hand, contacted the local Red Cross from his Kennett Square home.

Q: Some of my family members are not pork eaters. During the holiday season, they prefer turkey ham instead of a regular baked ham. Do you have any ideas on how to make this dish a little more flavorful? I have pre-sliced and baked the turkey ham, adding a sweet glaze, but my glaze recipe is always crappy. Your expertise is greatly needed and appreciated. Thank you! I've always been a little afraid of that turkey ham. Never could figure out how they crossed a turkey with a pig. It always sounded like one of those really bad, made-for-cable movies where the voiceover intones, "They only wanted to create a tastier piece of meat.

Andrew Haig sat next to the bank of radios in his Rutledge home Wednesday afternoon, listening to the grim news about damage from Hurricane Hugo. "In St. Croix, there is no electricity, no phones and no water," one broadcaster said. "A few ham radios are operating, using private power generators, but they are low on gas. More gasoline will be sent in during the next 24 hours. " The broadcast was not from a commercial station. It was from an amateur radio operator, or ham, passing on the news from other hams in the Caribbean.

Reprinted from Friday's editions. By Steven Rea INQUIRER MOVIE CRITIC If you're going to serve up an old fairy tale, you may as well make it look dazzling. And Tarsem Singh, the director of Mirror Mirror, has certainly done that. From its "once upon a time" animated intro to its swooping views of a golden-domed castle perched atop a precipice, to the bellowslike stilts worn by a certain septet of little people in this new take on the old Snow White yarn, everything looks, well, fantastic.

A trip to the United Kingdom, where fast - but fresh and light - sandwich shops rule, inspired Capogiro owner Stephanie Reitano to create this new line for her gelateria. Ingredients are high-quality (eggs from Green Meadow Farm, ham from Lancaster), the packaging is sleek, and all the sandwiches are about 400 calories and made fresh daily. Pick one up with your morning coffee and score a meal deal. There's BLT, egg salad, ham or turkey with cheese, and tuna.   - Ashley Primis $5-$5.45, available at the 20th St., University of Pennsylvania, and 13th St. Capogiro locations, capogirogelato.com .

Beans and ham go together like country cousins - pork and beans, as in bacon-spiked baked beans; navy bean soup with nuggets of ham; and one of my favorites from my grandmother's kitchen: steamed green beans, fresh-picked from her farm's garden, studded with morsels of salty ham. This dish plays with that dynamic duo, substituting pieces of crackly prosciutto - made so by rendering in a skillet - to pair with the plump green beans. Toasted pine nuts play their flavor off both green beans and the cured ham. Parmesan and a drizzle of olive oil bring it all together.

At the cusp of each new season, I'm so happy to shift cooking gears that I tend to get carried away. Fresh asparagus? Let's have it for every dinner. Berries in all their glory? Breakfast and dessert each day. At some point I'll tire of these flavors, too, but for now, I want to indulge in the sheer relief that color - green! red! blue! - brings to the table. With Mother's Day this weekend and all those bridal and baby showers that pop up in the spring, I have entertaining on my mind.

I have been missing my Philly fix for these past two weeks as I've been far afield on a combo platter of adventures that were part-vacation, part work. A few days of Williamsburg taverns gave me a new appreciation for the effort that goes into our own City Tavern, as imperfect as that is. My food highlight in that corner of Virginia was a day visit to the Edwards ham factory in Surrey, where we saw mountains of hams getting salted, cured, and smoked. Even better was lunch at the old Surrey House Restaurant, a tidy little Southern diner where I followed up my mini-ham sammies with one of the most unique pie wonders I've had of late - peanut-raisin pie, a peanutty twist on classic pecan that I'm definitely going to be trying to re-create.

If agoraphobia means fear of the marketplace, then "Agora"-phobia is fear of the long-winded sword-and-sandal religious epic. This "Agora" is an expensive-looking update on an old De Mille-style extravaganza. It has many new and provocative ideas, certainly, but the same British accents and the same stodgy execution. Speaking of execution: "Agora" stars Rachel Weisz as storied astronomer Hypatia, an aristocrat and philosopher who dazzles students in 4th-century Alexandria with her brilliant ideas about orbits, gravity and the movement of stars, moons and planets.

Art Linkletter was a very nice man. I ought to know. In 1963, I was a kid on House Party, saying the darndest things. The CBS producers came to our school, Immaculate Heart of Mary in Santa Ana, Calif., in a procession only a little less than papal. They all shared the twinkle in the Linkletter eye, his knack for getting kids to spill. I have no idea what I said, but they must have loved it, because I got on the show. Why? I drove Miss Blecksmith out of her mind in fourth grade, that's why. Poor woman.

4 tablespoons unsalted butter (1/2 stick) 1/4 cup all-purpose flour 4 cups milk (whole or low-fat, not fat-free) 12 ounces Gruyere, finely grated 1 pound ham (smoked, wet-cured), chopped 1 (9-ounce) package frozen artichoke hearts, thawed and squeezed to remove excess moisture 1 tablespoon Dijon mustard 1 tablespoon mango chutney 1 tablespoon minced tarragon leaves or 1 1/2 teaspoon dried tarragon 12 ounces dried ziti, cooked and drained according to package directions 1 ounce finely grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese Position rack in the center of the oven and preheat to 350 degrees.