[Sca-cooks] Yankees, Hash, and Beets, was and still is: Winter comfort food...

[Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius]

On Dec 6, 2005, at 2:06 PM, Jeff Gedney wrote:

> well, you could make it as it was originally done....
>
> The story goes something like this:
> The wife of a worker man (insert miner, mill worker,
> or lumberman... The story varies a bit here) who also
> ran a flop house suspected her hubby of cheating on
> her. On morning in a fit of pique she ran his red
> flannel longjohns (freshly laundered!! they were
> probably hanging by the stove to dry - a target of
> opportunity!) through the grinder and cooked them up
> in the morning's hash to get rid of the evidence.
> The patrons raved about the brightly colored red hash
> and kept asking for it...
> Not having anymore red longjohns, she threw in beets
> for color.
>
> The rest is history.
> The story is apocryphal.

It has been alleged, and _possibly_ (and _only_ possibly) with a  
little more authority, that Red Flannel Hash is supposed to be made  
with the various assorted remains of a New England Boiled Dinner,  
which, in some circles, is just a little more involved than your  
standard Corned Beef and Cabbage with Potatoes. Consequently, there  
are Red Flannel Hash recipes out there which call not only for beets  
(in addition to the other stuff), but for chopped, cooked cabbage as  
well.

However, even if I am the UUY, I'm not, strictly speaking, as much of  
a Yankee as Cap'n Elias, so it's possible I'm not up on all the  
research into this particular field. Now, if we were talking  
cheowdah, it'd be different...

Adamantius


"S'ils n'ont pas de pain, vous fait-on dire, qu'ils  mangent de la  
brioche!" / "If there's no bread to be had, one has to say, let them  
eat cake!"
     -- attributed to an unnamed noblewoman by Jean-Jacques Rousseau,  
"Confessions", 1782

"Why don't they get new jobs if they're unhappy -- or go on Prozac?"
     -- Susan Sheybani, assistant to Bush campaign spokesman Terry  
Holt, 07/29/04