Glaze ingredients depend on the collection of preserves in your fridge. Cranberry sauce and brown sugar are joined here by grapefruit marmalade, homemade peach preserves, and mustard and ketchup.

Are you a ham for Easter kind of cook? Some prefer lamb, and these days asparagus is a must-have, and I am seeing fresh peas and spinach on Easte r menus offered up in print. In Maine, if you like to acquire local food, most years, and this year especially, fresh asparagus, spinach, and peas are still a couple months off at the earliest; lambs born a month ago are too little to eat, so Easter dinner featuring them is a bit anticipatory, at the very least. Ham, along with scalloped potatoes, a nice carrot dish, a Waldorf salad from our stored apple supply, however, fits our seasonal Maine profile a little more aptly. Best of all, ham, and all those lovely boiled Easter eggs, yield a glorious pile of leftovers for a week of meals, great lunches, and breakfasts.

One improvement to the baked ham tradition is what you can do with the glaze. Some hams come with a little packet of seasoned sugar. Throw it out. You can do a better job of mixing your own by opening the fridge or kitchen cupboard and using some preserves you already have on hand, in fact, might be glad to find another use for besides spreading on toast. I saw a recipe online, adapted below, which rested on exactly the contents of part jars we all have kicking around, with the possible exception of the cranberry sauce. A tart preserve like a citrus marmalade, a sweet preserve like peach or apricot, with a dollop of ketchup and another of mustard and some brown sugar to make it stick, is all you need.

I am an enthusiastic chutney maker, and when I think about some ham glazes that feature raisins, mustard, vinegar, and sugar, I see elements of chutney which leads me to think that perhaps chutney alone might make a good glaze.

If you have a large enough crowd for Easter dinner you might not end up with much leftover, but perhaps there will be some bits and ends for chopping to add to omelets, using in strada, or mixing with celery, onion, mayonnaise, and mustard and spreading on bread for sandwiches.

A ham bone is a blessing. Pea soup usually suggests itself but a ham bone can also season a dish of rice and beans, or a boiled pot of collards or kale to which you can later add cooked beans, like cannellini.

Then all those eggs. Growing up, I happily anticipated post-Easter egg salad sandwiches in my lunch box, a real treat and break from sliced Velveeta, baloney, and p.b. & j sandwiches. Nowadays in addition to sandwiches, I enjoy curried creamed eggs on toast for breakfast or supper, and deviled eggs for lunch, or chopped eggs (maybe with chopped ham?) to add substance to a green salad. In my book, a boiled egg is like money in the bank.

Now to the glaze. Mix it up any day this week, stash it in the fridge, and when Sunday rolls around, pull it out, and slap it on the ham and you are all set to go.