Hashbrowns, ham and eggs

Ack! Life has interfered with Lori K's Cafe this week. To make up for it, here's the yummy hashbrowns I made this morning. They didn't look as neat as this picture, but I'm sure they tasted better.

Lori K's hashbrowns with eggs and ham

Serves 2

Ingredients

2 medium white potatoes

1 medium yellow onion

2 tablespoons oil

1 tablespoon butter

Garlic salt and pepper

2-4 free-range eggs

Sea salt

2 thin slices ham (I used ham-off-the-bone from the Harris Teeter deli)

Instructions

Grate the potatoes into a bowl of cold water. When completed, swish all the gratings around in the bowl and drain well. Chop the onion.

Heat a large cast-iron skillet to medium-high heat, then lower it to medium-low heat and add the oil. Swish it around so that all the surface and up the sides a half-inch are coated. Add the potatoes in a clump in the middle, then move them out to the sides. Sprinkle the onions on top. Cut the butter into small cubes and distribute evenly atop the potatoes and onions. Season with garlic salt and pepper.

Cook for 5-10 minutes until the edges of the potatoes are brown. Cut the round of potatoes into quarter sections by slicing across the pan with a metal spatula, then slicing again perpendicular to the first slice. Flip each quarter so the toasty side is now up. Make a little well in the center of each potato quarter and put an egg in each (or 2 of them, for 1 egg apiece). Season with pepper and a grind of sea salt. Cook for 10 minutes, or until the whites have set.

When almost ready to serve, heat the ham slices for 30 seconds in the microwave.

Put the ham on the plate, put the hashbrowns with the eggs atop them over the ham, and garnish with parsley. Add hot sauce if you'd like. Serve immediately with strong coffee.

Picture worth... not much

Americans must not expect truth in advertising. How else can one explain how food that looks so good in TV and magazine ads looks so bad when you unwrap it?

In the Guardian today, an interesting food feature:

The buccaneering spirit of the internet is never more evident than on sites and blogs where ordinary, blameless consumers take the manufacturers of dodgy, sub-standard or just plain rubbish products to task. In the world of food, this often means pointing out the subtle differences between the advertised images of products and the actual reality, hence the theme of our gallery this week.

Germany and the USA are the settings for most of the well-directed ire represented, but there are plenty of examples right here in the UK too just waiting to be exposed. So the next time you're served a particularly nasty-looking burger or buy something from a shop which doesn't live up to the picture on the package, take a pic and add it to our Flickr group, or just email it straight over. We'll compile the results to form a British rogues gallery in a few weeks' time.

To see the slideshow, click here. The photo is of a McDonald's sausage burrito.

Fight hunger by eating out this week

Want to fight childhood hunger in America in an easy way? Share Our Strength's Great American Dine Out is going on this week, Sept. 20-26. You go to a participating restaurant and the restaurant donates a portion of the proceeds to Share Our Strength. Couldn't be simpler.

The only local restaurant in Charlottesville that is participating is the Blue Moon Diner (where I've had several outstanding meals), although a few chain restaurants are participating as well. For a full list of restaurants across the nation, go here.

You can search for restaurants near you by zip code.