It was Saturday, and I awoke with some eye irritation, probably from a piece of the hard crust that forms in the corner of your eye when you’re asleep. This is always annoying, and made me feel pretty awful. Blood sugar was good this morning, though, and thus I had an interesting day.
I decided that I needed to clean some of the pots and pans that had been accumulating grease deposits for a while, so off to the DIY store at the Elephant I went. Bought two boxes of Brillo, two different types of pot cleaner, and some caustic soda for the upstairs bathroom (hair gets down in the trap and there you have it…).
I cleaned the enamel casserole pot first. It had lots of brown gunk on the bottom, burned on. The pot cleaner (kind of a paste, applied with a web cloth) seems to have softened the gunk—then the Brillo pad and a little elbow grease removed it. I was amazed. It’s still a bit the worse for wear, but it’s clean. I followed that with a shine on our Moka espresso pot, and that cleaned up too. It is amazing how accomplished doing this kind of thing makes you feel.
I kvetched to my friend Fraffie Welch in Marblehead about the awful Tesco corned-beef hash I had a few days ago after reading her column in the Marblehead Reporter. She replied saying that Prudence hash is the best canned hash around. Unfortunately, this isn’t available here in the UK and I don’t think it would be a good idea to get another appetite that can only be satisfied by hauling cans back from the US. So, I made my own.
Sliced some raw potatoes and parboiled until they were nearly done. Saut
Good heavens, that was marvelous! The hash looks lovely, as does the spider web, and I bet the hash tasted perfect. The web looked and sounded like it evoked all sorts of things. Good going, Chris!
Thanks.
While I suppose some people will be put off by it, I think that spiderweb picture is just gorgeous.
Thank you both for your sentiments. Much appreciated, especially since my photography is mostly crap.
Some spiders eat their web; others just abandon it. The cob or daddy longlegs is one that abandons each web, leaving them to adorn our walls and ceilings. Some use their webs to carry them long distances through the air, alternately spinning and eating the web to control their flight. Spiderweb can be very strong as well as very thin, lending its presence to optical devices.
A ‘hash’ is a fine chop. We often made roasts on Sunday, grinding the leftover meat, of whatever kind, to cook with finely cubed potatoes and chopped onions and any leftover vegetables we had, to make Monday’s hash. Rarely was anything left for later consumption.
Although we sometimes had leftover corned beef, we usually used it for sandwiches, not for hash. We also ground chicken, turkey and beef, depending on our Sunday dinner, to make hash. My cousin often made venison hash (or venison chili); he got lots of deer while dating the game warden’s daughter. I suspect lamb hash would be good.
One rule we observed as I was growing up was that hash wasn’t made with fresh ingredients, only from the leftovers of the last few days. No two hashes were alike.
the spider web picture was cool 🙂
and if a bee got onto the web, i think it’ll not die so soon. The spider will sting it numb before wrapping it up for a meal later.