Tuesday’s Tale

Tuesday was warm (or warmer, anyway) so I wore my jacket into work. I swear you have to play musical-coats this time of year!

I stopped at Home Depot on the way in and bought a 12-inch long flat-head screwdriver, even though I was pretty sure the end was too thick to fit my screws.

I went home at lunch and ate a can of Campbell’s soup. I checked the screwdriver and, sure enough, it was too thick.

I thought about it during the afternoon. I could grind the new screwdriver down to the correct thickness. And, I had other, even weirder, ideas like leave it sticking out and caulk the hell out of it.

In the end, I decided that it couldn’t be inherently made to be this hard to install, so I must have done something wrong. So, when I got home, I changed clothes, treated Caley, had a glass of cranberry juice and then took it back off. It took over two hours.

Then I took it apart (it doesn’t come that way) and placed the plastic ends over the holes I drilled. Sure enough, I could get two of the three covered perfectly, but the third one was off. I used the template, so the drill must have walked on me. In a way I was lucky that I couldn’t use the drill to screw it in, because the plastic would have probably broken.

But, by then my right shoulder was trashed again, it was almost 7:30 p.m. and I was hungry. So the solution will wait for another day.

First thing was to make the other half head of cabbage into coleslaw. I cut out the core and then sliced it as thin as I could. I could have used the mandolin, but then I would have to wash it! I grated up a carrot after I peeled it and added that to the bowl. I dressed it with Marzetti Original Coleslaw Dressing (the kind that in the refrigerated section of the grocery store). I tossed it about and set it in the fridge to get happy.

Then I fixed a plate of leftovers to eat the complete corned beef dinner another day. I covered that with cling wrap and stuck it in the fridge. The rest of the leftovers were to become corned beef hash.

I had checked out several recipes for corned beef hash and got some good ideas. So I diced up a medium onion and an orange bell pepper (I couldn’t find a red one at Westborn). I sautéed then until they were soft. Meanwhile, I diced up the remaining carrots, potatoes and corned beef. I was trying for 1/4-inch dice and I got it, sometimes, lol. I added them to the skillet and dumped in about 1/4 cup of the au jus from the slow cooker (I saved it for reheating my leftovers). You could also use beef broth or even water, but you need something to help stick the hash together.

Then I used a trick from Alton Brown and put a smaller lid directly on top of the hash to weight it down and develop a crust. I turned that down to medium low and let it go for about 10 minutes.

Sidebar: I was tempted to use Alton’s recipe, too. But he uses the leftover cabbage and that just sounded awful).

After 10 minutes, I tossed it about with a spatula (I got crust!), pressed it down again with the lid and let it go another 10. I tossed that around and plated some with some coleslaw.

It was seriously good eats! And a great way for a single person to use up a big corned beef dinner.

I ate it watching NCIS (it has started taping at 8:00 p.m.). When it was over, I started watching NCIS LA, but I got sleepy. So, I let it tape, turned off the TV and went to bed.