Oh, hey, Diary. Say, I hope you're hungry this morning because I'm going to give you the first in a series of finger-licking recipes that I'll be creating for my fellow madmen and women in cyberspace. Today's dish is called Ham Surprise!

What you'll need (your sine qua nons, if you will)

Frying Pan (Non-stick, I must tell you)
Pre-Grated Cheese (Ideally a medley of cheddar, monterey jack, asadero, and queso blanco -- but I dare say you can squeak by with plain old American)
Spring Onions (Do buy at least six)
Ham (You know, one of those precut shanks -- precut, mind, not pre-sliced! Oh, and make sure it's precooked, for goodness' sake. I once overlooked that requirement and it spoiled my entire recipe!)
New Potatoes (Why not get one of those little cartons of prewashed spuds?)
Sweet and Sour Sauce (You heard me: sweet and sour sauce!)

Now then, are your shirt sleeves rolled up?

Fine. We begin by slicing three good, honest slabs of ham, hearty, sandwich-sized hunks, a full half-inch in thickness. (Watch those fingers. Remember, always cut away from yourself. I'd feel awful if you nicked a digit in the middle of one of my recipes!)

Now, have you got your slabs? Of ham, I mean? Fine. Now get out your cutting board (oops, I forgot to list that above, but it went without saying, I hope.) Now flourish the knife again, this time with a view toward reducing those slabs into bite-sized chunks. Fair enough? (Fine.) Now, chop away. (Hiya!)

Now then, I'll thank you to add those ham chunks to your frying pan, beneath which you should now turn up a small flame on your gas stove, or adjust the coils to "low" on your fancy electric models.

Next: Do you see those spring onions? Well, I want you to chop them up into Sweet Tart-sized pieces (not those huge Sweet Tarts that you used to eat as a kid, but the smaller ones that come in boxes). That's it: chop-a-chop-a-chop-a, people. Ha ha! (No, seriously!) And then (surprise, surprise!) add those babies to your increasingly toasty frying pan. Are ya with me? (You're either with me or you're agin' me!)

Isn't this fun, by the way? (Oh, yeah!)

Ahem. Now it's time to lay into those new potatoes with your knife, slicing and dicing without mercy until at least 6 of those golfball- to baseball-sized spuds are reduced to mere slivers. Comprendo? And then boil said slivers in a couple quarts of water for, oh, I want to say 10 minutes or so.

To recap: we've got our ham chunks simmering away on low, quite o'erstrewn with minced onion, the whiles our sliced new potatoes (skins on for health and texture) are dancing about in a hot sea of aqua vita. ("Shake it, baby, shake it!")

Before we add the next ingredient (that wonderful cheese medley!) to our non-stick frying pan, permit me to observe that you should be turning your ham occasionally over that low heat to prevent it from burning. Okay? The same goes for the boiling potato slices: I'll thank you to stir them occasionally lest they stick to the bottom of the pot.

Now comes the fun part: making the "sauce" for your Ham Surprise! (Oh, boy, oh, boy!) Ahem.

Now, you're going to need your cheese (the above-mentioned cheese medley, ideally, or at least some grated American cheese, though are you sure your supermarket doesn't carry the medley? You might want to ask the manager -- I mean, I can't believe in this day and age -- well, do your best, that's all I'm saying.)

Aha! Now you're going to take that pre-grated cheese and you're going to sprinkle it liberally over the ham and onions until you've done covered the entire skillet with the colorful hodgepodge. (Oh!) Behold how it melts! It's becoming a kind of gloppy sauce, isn't it? evocative of breakfast omelets, isn't it? (Well, isn't it?)

And you're saying, "Brian, once this melts evenly, I could stir it around and serve it as-is! Why, Brian, it looks straight-up luscious!"

And I'd be like: Hold your horses there, pardner: we've yet to add the secret ingredient:

Be so good as to bring out that sweet-and-sour sauce! That's right, you're going to strew about two heaping teaspoons of the sauce over the contents of your skillet and then gently stir! ("Stir it up, little darlin', Stir it up!") No, seriously. And let it simmer until the whole kit-and-culinary caboodle is heated through.

Remove from heat and, voila: Ham Surprise!

Serves 3 madmen of moderate appetite,
2 madmen of hearty appetite,
or 1 madman of immoderate appetite

Rats! I left you high-and-dry on the subject of those boiling potatoes, didn't I? My bad, gang! But here's what you do: After 10 minutes of just and proper boiling of these wonderful veggies (what would we do without potatoes, by the way? Aren't they great?), fling the said taters into your skillet and mince them into yet tinier pieces. (Aye, show no mercy! Heh heh!) Okay? Then proceed with the previously described stirring of the whole "kit-and-culinary caboodle." Fair enough? (Fine.)