Friday Friend Recipe #78 -- Hash Brown Casserole

 Friday Friend Recipe #78-- Hash Brown Casserole

Making my way thru my Friday Friend Cookbook, one recipe at a time.

What is the Friday Friend cookbook: I have about 50 of my closest friends and family on an e-mail forum which I called the Friday Friends (from all over the county). At first, most of them didn't know each other, (they knew me) but over the past 15 years, we've answered and shared silly--and serious---questions, exchanged Secret Santa Christmas gifts, had a dieting contest in which we paid a $1 a week and that money went to a scholarship fund for a Friday Friends son's memorial scholarship, and we went on a great vacation for my 52 birthday.

AND, we contributed recipes for a cookbook.

I was looking at the cookbook the other night and I said, "I should make every recipe in here for my blog."
The Handyman--who knows me better than I know myself (this happened to be a question on the Friday Friend forum once---does your spouse/partner know you better than you know yourself?)--said,  "you'll never, EVER do that."
WELL---maybe I'll show him!  Maybe I will.

Which brings me to this... recipe #78

My Mom, Bev's

Hash Brown Casserole

 

 

 

 Besides  the baked beans and a broccoli casserole (which I haven't blogged/posted about yet), variations of a hash brown casserole are the most duplicated recipe in the Friday Friend Cookbook.

I guess my friends do love a good potato!

 

You really can't go wrong with a good potato dish.

This isn't the one my mom  'usually' made.

 

 Or at least it isn't the one,  I remember most and also make.  The other one, the one I make  has cheese in it. (I'll post it later on)

 

My brother and I had an argument once about my mom's potato casserole.

I make the one with cheese--- he makes this one.

We argued about the cheese in it.

He said it had none and I said it did.

Then I got out a church cookbook to PROVE to him I WAS RIGHT!!

 

I WAS RIGHT, because in that cookbook my mom had entered the cheesy one.

BUT-- he was also right, as my mom made this one too--which is the one he makes still.

 

 

It's very good!

 

 

Hash Brown Casserole

FF Bev Hambelton

Kennewick, WA

 

32 oz frozen hash browns

1 pint sour cream

1/2 cup chopped onion

1 can cream of chicken soup

salt and pepper

2 cups corn flakes

1/2 cup melted butter

 

 

Put hash browns in a 9x13 baking dish.  Mix the next 4 things and pour over potatoes.  Top with crushed cereal and pour butter over top.

Bake at 350 for 1 hour.

 

In the summer of 2011, we went on a rafting trip with my parents and their friends.  I invited my friend Theda and her husband John to go along -- we, at over 50, were the youngest ones on the float.

We had a great time!

 

My mom couldn't swim and she was afraid of water.

so...

They had a pool in their backyard.

She loved to parasail in Hawaii.

and

She organized a river float.

 

She was braver than she thought.

Here are a few photos of that river trip... she and my dad.

My dad looks like he's really contemplating something there.

Okay...I'm going to share something that might seem kind of melancholy, but it's really NOT.

It's a great memory (for me) of what my mom thought of her life.

 

I have always loved family history and family stories and in about 1999, I began to take oral histories of all family members-- BECAUSE I AM A BIG DORK-- but now that my parents have passed away, I feel so lucky to have these.

 

Anyway....

In August of 2000, (yes, I'm that nerdy),   I asked the question, what do you remember about 1959?

 

My mom wrote: In 1959, I was very, very happy. I was married and living in California with my Marine husband.  I worked in a bakery lunch counter and had to walk to and from work, which was about 2 miles one way and then be on my feet all day. We only had one car and your father had to drive out to the base.

I got pregnant and was so happy, but did have morning sickness all day long, so as I walked to and from work, I would have to stop and throw up every so often. WHAT FUN!

Then in August, I had a baby and I have never been happier!  What a thrill to hold my very own baby.  All my life I wanted to be married and have kids and now my dream had been completed. 

It was a very good year.

 

In 2014, my mom was suffering from Alzheimer's, when my dad passed away.

She couldn't quite understand what had happened, so at night I would lay with her in bed and tell her stories -- I was channeling the book: THE NOTEBOOK, okay?-- of her life.  She and my dad's life together.  (they started kindergarten together).

If I stopped in the middle of their story, thinking she was asleep, she would squeeze my hand and say "then what?" so I would continue on.

One night when I got to the part where they had a baby  (that would be me in 1959) I said,  Then you had a baby.

She squeezed my hand and said "a BEAUTIFUL baby".

 

That's it.

My mom's story for today!

 

I'm so happy that she loved her life and was so happy!

 

If you want me to end on a lighter note---

After we moved her in to an assisted living facility, she thought she was in Hawaii, in a vacation resort.