I owe my life to hash browns.

The first time my dad ever called my mom, he said, "I love hashed brown potatoes!" when she answered the phone. No "Hello." No "Um, this is Buzz Brandeis -- we met the other night at the Quadrangle Club?" Just a bright, enthusiastic "I love hashed brown potatoes!"

Fortunately -- for the sake of my own, and my descendants', existence -- my mom didn't hang up. Fortunately, she laughed. Fortunately, she remembered the line, which came from a Eugene Ionesco play they had both seen the night they met.

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Neither of my parents can remember the name of the play: My dad thinks it may have been "The Woman With Three Noses"; my mom recalls it as something like "The Woman With One Eye." I can't find any proof that a play exists under either name. I thought maybe it could have been "The Rhinoceros" -- the only Ionesco play I had ever heard of -- but the closest reference I could find to hash browns in that script was a stage direction that called for an "edible cigarette" (a hash one, perhaps?).

I hope to someday find the play about the woman with the unusual face, whoever she may be. It would be amazing to see, in black and white, the line that brought my parents together, the line that launched their relationship, a union that has been as tangled and nourishing as a wild mesh of potato shreds. I would love to trace my existence back to its absurdist, root-vegetable roots.

hash n (1662) 3 b: a confused muddle

My husband and I had an absurd hash brown connection of our own early in our relationship. A couple of months after we met, we had the chance to housesit for one of his mother's friends. Our first morning there, I woke up early and thought about how nice it would be to make a romantic breakfast.

Living in a dorm, I never had the chance to cook for Matt before. We were young and poor and hadn't brought any groceries with us to the housesitting house, so I poked around the woman's kitchen, looking for possibilities. Aside from a packet of stale pappadam, all I could find was a bag of potatoes, just starting to sprout. I discovered some garlic, rooted around for some oil and set about gouging out the pale eyes of the spuds.

This was my first attempt at making hash browns, but I figured it would be fairly simple. How hard could it be to fry up some potatoes? I heated the oil in a cast-iron skillet, tossed in the garlic, then added the sliced potatoes just as the garlic began to burn.

"Mmm, it smells good in here," Matt said as he came down the stairs. He walked across the kitchen to kiss the back of my neck. I swiveled to give him access to my lips. When I turned back to the pan, the spatula had melted.

It looked like the tip of a soft-serve ice-cream cone, its boxy edge liquefied into a dramatic swoop. In my limited kitchen experience, I had seen nothing wrong with using a rubber spatula in a hot frying pan. Now the potatoes were completely threaded with ribbons of rubber.

Matt was very sweet about it, and insisted we eat the hash browns anyway. We spent most of the morning pulling chewy strands out of our mouths and spitting them into our napkins. Needless to say, I didn't find Matt's heart through his stomach.

hash n (1662) 2: a restatement of something that is already known

More than 12 years later, I had never even attempted to make hash browns again. Hash browns had become a going-out-to-breakfast treat for us, not something to eat at home. We are a family of diverse eaters -- I'm a vegetarian, my omnivore husband has definite carnivorous tendencies, our son has been a "lacto-(except melted cheese-o)-ovo-baco vegetarian most of the year and our daughter vacillates between these camps. Hash browns are one thing we can always enjoy together.

We've all become hash brown connoisseurs. We can rattle off the distinct charms of crispy golden hash browns, soft, pale hash browns, home fries, German fries, little fried fast-food hash brown coins, hash browns that look like hot potato chips, hash browns pressed into cakes, hash browns in chaotic shreds all over the plate.

We can debate the additions of onions and green peppers. We can discuss the relative merits of ketchup and hot sauce (and whether you should pour the stuff over the top or goop it on the side for dipping). We just can't tell you how to make the spuds at home.

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