Cookin'

My sleep schedule is all whacked out this week. I was up pretty early yesterday, and farted around the house until around 6:00 pm. Then I was suddenly overwhelmingly tired, so I laid down for a quick nap, and didn't wake up again until midnight.

So then I was wide awake. Rob was gone, playing low-stakes poker with his old roommate, and sitting in front of the TV didn't sound the least bit appealing. I did a little bit of websurfing, then headed off to the grocery store and did the shopping that I never got around to doing yesterday.

Sometimes when I'm bored, I'll browse a list of foodie websites and look for recipe ideas. And lately I've been thinking of cooking a hashbrown casserole, kind of like the kind they have at Cracker Barrel. I have a huge bag of hashbrowns in the freezer that I purchased before the move, but haven't felt like making them anytime in the past couple of months. But the casserole sounded pretty good, so it was off too the store to get some ingredients--cream of chicken soup, sour cream, cheese, an onion, and a bunch of other stuff (I was out of Coke, and dammit, just as I write this sentence I realized that I forgot the limes...)

So once I got back, I turned on Mike & Mike on ESPN HD and got busy in the kitchen mixing and measuring. Everything was pretty smooth, and once I had it in the casserole pan, covered in foil, and stowed in the fridge, I headed off to the hot tub for some relaxation.

The constant rain of the past day and a half has been wonderful, cooling the outside temperature down to the high seventies, although it's pretty damn humid out. But still, if it's not above 80 degrees, it's nice outside.

While sitting there enjoying the nice weather and tiny bubbles, I realized that I'd forgotten to put the sour cream in the casserole mix. Doh! Once the timer wound down and the hot-tub shut itself of, I made a quick stop to pick up the junk mail and then headed back to the apartment.

I dumped the casserole out of the pan and into a huge stock pot, added the sour cream, stirred it up, and then folded the whole mess back into the pan without spilling a bit. Rob had gotten home by then, but both of us were more tired than hungry, so it's sitting in the fridge until around noon or so when I get up and bake it.

I considered making one with eggs, but I figured that would just be too heavy. Besides, I like plain scrambled eggs on the side, along with bacon or sausage, so this casserole has no meat or eggs in it. I was thinking of adding some mild diced Anaheim chilis to the mix, but figured I'd hold off on the experimentation until next time. This is my first attempt at hashbrown casserole, and I want to make sure it's good on it's own.

But now it's time to go back to bed and try to re-adjust the sleep schedule. I'll get up in a few hours, make a pot of coffee, put the casserole in the oven, perhaps do some sausage links and scrambled eggs, and enjoy my breakfast. Rob gets to free ride on this one, so I hope he likes it. Otherwise, he can go back to eating his Krusty-O's

Mikey