Amy N Kaplan

Feeding six people on a budget was never easy. I had to find creative ways to make food stretch further… and hide a few veggies sometimes! In desperation I threw together what shouldn’t have been enough food for all of us in an electric frying pan and I suddenly had enough food. I never measured anything when I made this for the kids, I just “knew” it was the right amount. So, here goes my first attempt at telling anyone how to make my kids’ favorite meal. Please keep in mind that this made enough for four growing children (two boys), a husband who could eat dinner and then ask what was for dinner, and myself.

1. Buy some ham. I usually bought about 500-750 grams of ham. You don’t want sliced or spiral, you want a chunk of ham. Dice it. Make it as small as you can.
2. Get a bag of potatoes. It doesn’t matter what kind they are. Use whatever is cheapest, mix and match, it’s all good. I used about 6-8 large potatoes. Wash them, peel them and dice them. Or just wash them and dice them. (My ex-husband was convinced the skin would kill him so we peeled them.)
3. Will your family eat onions? If so, dice 1 or 2 of them.
4. My family liked mushrooms, so I would add about 150-200 grams of mushrooms… sliced thin or diced.
5. We didn’t add any other veggies, but you can add peppers, zucchini, sweet potato, etc. Just make sure you dice it.
6. Now you’ll need to gather some other ingredients. Honey, tabasco, salt, pepper, parsley, butter (or margarine, doesn’t really matter)

The prep work takes the most time. The kids liked helping, so I had a lot of sous chefs.

1. I usually started with approximately one stick of butter or margarine in a hot electric skillet. When it started melting, I added about 2-3 tablespoons of honey and 3-4 dashes of tabasco.
2. Then I dumped in the potatoes and got them cooking. You want to make sure to get the honey and butter all over the potatoes. Add your spices. Keep mixing the potatoes around until they’re about halfway cooked.
3. Now add your other veggies (unless it’s squash or sweet potato… add that with the potatoes). You might need to add more butter and honey at this point. If stuff sticks to the pan add more, if not don’t.
4. When the veggies are nearly done, add the ham. The skillet should be pretty full by now. Drizzle honey over the whole thing and stir.
5. When the veggies are done and the ham is heated through, it’s done.

Oftentimes we had a salad with this. I let the kids make the salad, so I never knew what was going to be in it. They were happy, they ate, it worked for us.

Let me know what your family thinks of the recipe. My new husband doesn’t like it at all. My eldest is now vegan and won’t eat it any more. Times change.