It bears mentioning that in the past few years, I have become a lazy cook. I love to eat, I adore good food, but somehow the process of cooking has become something less than bliss for me. I think the creative energy I used to pour into soufflés is now being channeled into my writing. My writing gets the freshest, most savory part of me; the kitchen gets my leftovers, my dried-out scraps. I hope to someday reclaim my inner Wolfgang Puck, but for now we eat takeout burritos and pasta with jarred sauce far more often than I'd like to admit.

hash \'hash\ vt 1 a: to chop into small pieces

When I started to look for hash brown recipes, I anticipated only a few ingredients, only a few steps from start to finish. It appeared that I was fooling myself. "The Joy of Cooking" gals wanted me to pour a quarter-cup of cream over the hash browns while they cooked. Julia Child's hash brown "flipping" instructions freaked me out. Even though she says she prefers a "slightly messy flip," her description of a "daring flip" was a bit too intimidating for this cook. (Child also says she likes to use her hash browns as a bed for game hen, which, I've heard, can be slightly messy sleepers.)

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Many recipes wanted me to boil or bake the potatoes before I grated, diced or sliced them, which seemed like way too much work. If I'm going to boil or bake potatoes, I'm going to stop right there, grab the butter and salt and chow down, thank you very much.

I found recipes that sounded more like latkes (something I do cook at least once a year, with varying degrees of success), recipes that sounded more like french fries, recipes that sounded more like brain surgery. By the time I happened upon the most simple recipe, from the Potato Board online (shred some potatoes, cook them in butter or oil), I was so exhausted that even that seemed too difficult. I wanted to have nothing whatsoever to do with a frying pan.

hash n (1662) 3 a: hodgepodge, jumble

That's when I decided to hark back to the absurdist element of my parents' first meeting, the absurdist element of the first meal I cooked for Matt. I went online again and looked at all the shudder-inducing hash brown casserole recipes I had avoided earlier. What could be more absurd, after all, than hash browns cooked with cornflakes and soup?

I decided to blend a couple of the recipes I found into one gloriously mid-20th century casserole concoction, the kind of casserole that always embarrassed my friends when I was a kid but that I secretly pined for. Most of the steps involved simply opening packages and mushing the ingredients together -- perfect for my lazy frame of mind. Plus, my daughter was more than happy to crush the cornflakes.

The only "tricky" parts of the recipe required melting some butter and chopping a few scallions, which I ended up being glad for -- their fresh green sting took away some of my guilt about cooking an otherwise completely processed-food meal for my family.

Opening the soup can, I felt like the mutant child of Susie Homemaker and Andy Warhol.

To my surprise, what started out pretty much as a joke ended up being a decadently satisfying dinner. The casserole was pure comfort food, so rich it made me gasp for air. With a Greek salad (from a bag -- don't give me too much credit) and some baby peas, this proved to be quite the square meal, maybe even a cubic one.

The success was due, I'm sure, to the magic influence of the hash browns, which pretty much disappeared into the glop that made up the rest of the dish. Even hidden under cream of potato soup, even blanketed with sour cream, hash browns will forever taste like new beginnings to me -- a taste I'll always be grateful for.

"I love hashed brown potatoes!" my dad told my mom the first time he called her, 36 years ago this week. I do, too. With a vengeance. Maybe next time I'll even try to fry a batch -- with a metal spatula, of course -- myself.

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