when making a simple American recipe of hashbrown casserole turns out to be a creative feat...

For Easter tomorrow, we are gathering with friends (after church service) to celebrate together.  My contribution is to bring a hashbrown casserole and a salad.  It seemed easy of enough because, out of the blue, at our grocery last week they had frozen HASHBROWNS. Well, said I, this recipe will be a piece of cake.

So here was my recipe:

2 lbs frozen hash browns
1/2 cup margarine or 1/2 cup butter, melted
1 (10 1/4 ounce) can cream of chicken soup
1 pint sour cream
1/2 cup onion, peeled and chopped
2 cups cheddar cheese, grated
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon pepper

All that was left was  to mix all the ingredients together and put it in the oven to bake. Presto. Should be super simple. And that was the LAST time that I had that thought.  

Here is how it went down. 
   My bag of hashbrowns were whole hasbrowns, and I needed shredded hashbrowns. No worries, I will just throw it into my mini-food processor. The only problem was that I have a MINI food processor. Basically, I could only shred 3 hasbrowns at a time, out of a 2 lb bag.  No worries, I thought, this is worth it.  Something like my mom or aunt would make so it's worth it.  Finally, I got them all shredded. 
  I went to get my other ingredients Butter, check. Salt, check. Pepper, check. Onion, check. Cheese, check. Sour cream, hmmm... well I don't have sour cream but I did just buy those two boxes of whipping cream, so I will just add some vinegar and make it into sour cream. (You peeps in the States - in the land of plenty -  know you can do that, right?) I opened the boxes and BOTH were bad. For people that live NEAR a grocery store, that wouldn't be a problem, but we live 35 - 45 minutes (one way) away from the store.  SO, I did the next best thing - "Google". I found out that you can mix 3/4 c soured milk plus 1/3 c butter. So I tried it.  Not really like sour cream texture, but the taste was pretty similar so I went with it. (Not saying how much time this took, but way longer than it should have!)
   Last ingredient, can of chicken soup.  Don't really have that out here, where we live.  BUT we do have a dry mix that you add milk and other things to the mixture to get close to a can of chicken soup.  Done.  

So prep time according to the recipe - 15 minutes.
Real time prep time out here on the farm - I am not telling :) I am not even thinking about how you people in the States go to  the store and get everything you need in a few minutes and then you are on your way home again.  Then you dump all the ingredients out of the can into a bowl and viola.

And that my friends is how a simple American recipe turns into a 2+ hour ordeal... and that's not even cooked yet! 

It's always interesting out here folks!!! Have a good day!

Better yet, have an awesome Easter! HE IS RISEN!!!!