A Delicious Recipe for a Chain E-Mail

I got a chain e-mail from a friend the other day that asked me to be included in a recipe exchange. A friend, here in the Sandbox, by the way, and a caveat in the e-mail said "ingredients must be readily available." [That means my recipe for pork cutlets is no good as a response since pork cutlets are NOT readily available.] I can honestly say that this is the very first time I have ever taken part in a chain e-mail. Who has time for that kind of thing... Normally I just click "delete." Especially those that say, "send this to ten friends within five minutes for good luck."

After having just spent the last six weeks at home in the States, where my Mom just whipped up these fabulous dinners almost every single night, I have decided that I need to be a little more creative with my cooking and that it is unfair for me, where my only real job here is taking care of my DH and two Kids, to not do so. We tend to eat the same thing day after day after day after day. Well, not really the same thing - but my cooking is pretty much limited to a dinner of salmon, rice and green beans, or a dinner of steak [for DH and Kids - I don't eat it], potatoes and asparagus green beans. Oh, yeah, Sometimes I get really wild and I mix it up and go way out with the occasional eggplant parmesan or an alfredo dish of some sort - depending on what is available in the freezer that is pork - like bacon, or ham.

Spending a whole lot of time in the kitchen has never appealed to me. Not that I can't do it, I just would rather spend my time doing something else. Anything else. Sometime ago I found this website called "I'm an Organizing Junkie" [I am, too] and what is really cool about it is that it has a weekly feature called "Menu Plan Monday" where women [and probably some men] from all over post their entire weekly menus. So last week I went there looking for something different. With some four hundred choices to click on, I just kind of look for names that "stand out" in some way. And that is how I found "Purple Moose Tracks." [Purple is my favorite color - it just seemed to make sense to double-click.] Posted there was a recipe called "Hashbrown Delight."

I made it last week. It was delicious. A keeper, for sure. DH and I had it one night - and two nights later when a friend of ours was here, I reheated it and served it again. Needless to say, there is none left. It makes enough for six people, but not really. Because it is soooo dayum good! Here is the recipe, which is not quite exactly what was posted, but almost:

HASH BROWN DELIGHT

2 pounds frozen hash browns [we can only sometimes get them here]
1 small onion, chopped [I used a large onion]
2.5 cups cheddar cheese, grated [I used Colby and Monterey Jack]
1 can cream of celery soup [amazing - I actually found it, here!]
16 oz. sour cream [I used cream cheese - no sour cream available!]
1 cube melted butter [a couple of tablespoons]
Crushed corn flakes
Salt and pepper or lemon pepper*

Layer in a 9" X 13" pan, from bottom to top:

Hash browns
Onion
Cheese
Soup mixed with sour cream
Season with salt and pepper
Drizzle with melted butter
Cover with crushed corn flakes

Bake at 350 degrees for 90 minutes.

How simple are those ingredients?! Of course, we can't always find frozen hash browns, but we happen to have them right now... [And I've now got a half dozen bags in the freezer because you never know when you'll see them in the freezer again, here. Hoarding. Have to do it. Don't want to. But have to.]

*The lemon pepper is next to the poppy seeds. And they are both invisible...