Hash

Just a quick word about hash. For one thing, I love saying "hash". We ate "hash" for dinner, etc... For another thing, I kind of forgot about how much fun it is to fry up a bunch of random ingredients and put them all together, bound into deliciousness by the two main ingredients, fat and salt (and potatoes).

Last night we had a few things to use up, post haste. A potato. A half-pound of frozen shrimp. The first little beet greens from our garden. Mushrooms. A nearly fermented lime. I began by trying to cook them all separately. The beet greens were sauteed with garlic. The potato was chopped into tiny bits and fried with an onion. The mushrooms were sliced and the already-cooked shrimp was tossed with garlic. I had every intention of composing an elegant little plate with perfectly cooked, individual little dishes. But the heat rose, the hunger grew, the clock ticked. I threw the mushrooms into the cast iron skillet with the potatoes. Added more butter. Looked at the shrimp and garlic. Threw them in too. (Added more butter.) Finally I glanced at the beet greens, noticed they looked lonely, and tossed them in as well. More salt, a squeeze of very ripe lime juice and a hasty scoop onto the waiting plates. It was ugly, to tell you the truth. It was also not nearly enough. Rowan, who has been off-feed and sick for several days, ate so fast and so much that David and I had to share the rest of ours with him. Reluctantly. He didn't even notice the mushrooms in there, much less the dreaded slimy green things.

The moral of this story is...you can fry up a lot of things with potatoes and salt, and it will be good. Add an egg and it will probably be even better. I had forgotten this, but no longer. David actually loves it when I tell him that I am going on spate of frugality. To him, this means hashes and lentil concoctions, and Tabasco. Bless that man.