I’m setting about making a white bean and ham soup, with leftovers from yesterday’s Christmas dinner.

This year’s ham came, I’m afraid to confess, from Whole Foods on the Bowery, a store with which I have an increasingly conflicted relationship (meaning I use it more than I should). The little pig was was tasty enough — I glazed it with brown sugar, dijon mustard, and fig preserves — and I’m sure the remains will make for a lovely soup. But I did feel a little guilty about the Whole Foods thing. While I was throwing about online for ideas about preparing what I’d bought, I made the realization (via this piece from the Times a couple years back) that I should have made my purchase at the East Village Meat Market or another local butcher. Oh, well. Next year. Or maybe I’ll actually go for the traditional goose.

For more on how ham became a favored American food, see this recent piece by the cultural historian and literary critic David Shields.

And what was on your holiday table?