I’m in the United States but this term can be regional. There are parts of the country where you don’t know what will show up on your plate if you order “hash browns.” There are parts that don’t even know diced potatoes are a thing that exist. It’s all rather unstandardized.

We call them “home fries” rather than hash browns. I prefer them a little larger and crispier but even these are nice.

It’s rather improvised. The basics were dicing some cube steak venison, browning it in bacon fat, adding carrots, onion and bell pepper. Once they were all cooked through I deglazed the pot with some beer. Added the garlic, chili powder and cumin and have that a quick cook before adding the orange juice and 14 oz of crushed tomatoes. I let it simmer for about two hours before twerking the flavor by adding more chili powder and cumin, salt and pepper, more orange juice, soy sauce, red wine vinegar. Tasting between each additional until I was happy with it. Then I added to drained but not rinsed cans of kidney beans.

Venison is tricky. It doesn’t have enough fat on its own and you may need to add a bit of acid to balance any game flavor or brighten it up.

Southern sweet cornbread. This is my base recipe with a few options listed.

Southern Cornbread.
1 cup regular grind cornmeal.
1 cup all-purpose flour.
1 tbsp baking powder.
1 tsp salt
2/3 cup sugar.
1/4 cup bacon (cooked, chopped), 1/2 cup cheese, a jalapeno (sliced, deseeded), 1/4 cup peanut butter, 1/3 cup honey/maple syrup/corn syrup, or what ever else you may want. optional.
1 large egg.
1 1/4 cup milk, or butter milk.
1/3 cup liquid fat (oil, lard, butter etc).

• Preheat oven to 425f.
• grease a 10 inch cast-iron skillet or in 8 inch. square baking pan with the fat.
• Place pan in oven.
• place dry ingredients in a large bowl.
• whisk together
• add any optional items
• fold in the in the eggs and milk using as few. strokes as possible
• remove skillet or pan from oven.
• pour the batter in.
• give it a little shake to level it out,
• bake 30-35 minutes
• do the toothpick test to see if its done or needs more time.
• let it cool down before trying to remove it from the pan.

This version will definitely work if you only have 8 hours to cook.

The race to jail? Yes.

You’re going to have to look one up. I just eyeball it. But it’s searsome beef, put it in a pot with some small amount of pepperoni juice and diced pepperoncinis and gardinara with some stock And a little bit of seasoning that is mostly salt, pepper and thyme. Slow cook it for as many hours as you got.

It was impounded. Cost me $145 to get it out the next day.

There’s zero money in the bank so I’m thinking this week is going to be pretty much all chili with cornbread and pasta with crusty bread. I have to thaw some venison.

If someone pays for the supplies and isn’t a picky eater I’ll have almost anyone over as long as they aren’t wearing a red hat.

90 mph in a 55 zone with a BAC of .15 on a motorcycle. Don’t try this at home. It might cost you $7,000 to $15,000 over the course of the next 7 years. And it’s stupid.

My kitchen. My Dune.

Did you see the TV show The Bear? It’s the only food relevant through the entire series.

Sear some beef and slow cook it with pepperoncini brine, pepperoncinis, giardiniera and broth.

I’m Italian.

That’s sounds like cultural appropriation. Things are already rough between Canada and the US. I don’t want to create an internal incident with bastardized poutine.

The original plan was to roast some carrots and maybe make a sauce from deglazing the pan. But time was short because we were going to a workshop on dimentia so I threw this together.

But actual green greens are going to be pretty rare for a bit because of my $2 bank balance and no jobs scheduled.

I might sneak over to my neighbor’s yard and see if they have any dead nettles growing to forage for some greens. They aren’t living there since the fire and our geese have eaten all of ours. If I find some I might make a pesto out of that with some pecans and wild garlic from our yard. Because I could really go for some greens right now.

Like the headline “FDA releases nutritional guidelines for babies” and you catch yourself thinking “oh good. I have no idea what a serving size of baby is and I’ve been eating the whole thing at once.”

When I pulled the sausage out of the fridge I seriously considered grabbing an egg.

I had completely forgotten about that in the 32 years since I would have last seen it. Thank you.