I can’t remember how our recipe for hash first evolved. Desperation to cook something nourishing in a hurry probably was what happened.

Rumor had it that you should never eat hash in a restaurant because they scraped leftovers from plates which were returned to the kitchen, ground it up and re-served it as “hash.”

My mother made hash by grinding leftover roast beef with onions and raw potatoes, seasoned with some salt and pepper. This was placed in a casserole dish together with leftover gravy and baked until it was nice and crispy on top. Then all you had to do was clean that miserable messy grinder and clean up the onion juice that ran all over the floor when you were grinding the onion.

I still make hash this way if I have leftover beef roast, only I chop everything in a food processor to avoid the mess.

If you don’t have leftover beef, brown one pound of hamburger in a cast iron dutch oven, using a small amount of oil or bacon fat, if you have it.

Add a chopped raw onion and enough chopped raw potatoes to feed as many kids as you expect to show up for supper that night. A package of frozen hash brown potatoes works just fine, too.

Add salt and pepper to taste and a little green pepper if you have it. Add a little water, maybe half a cup, and dot the top with butter. If you have it, add leftover gravy instead of water.

Bake in the oven at 350 until the potatoes are done, probably an hour. Good with catsup.

There was one exception to the restaurant hash situation. When I first came to Helena in 1948 the G & B Cafeteria on Main Street was located across the street from where I worked for the Montana Unemployment Compensation Commission.

The cafeteria was in the front of the building and the back was occupied by a really disreputable cowboy bar. It was a place you didn’t go by yourself, but sometimes a group from the office would gang up and go together to eat their hash.

It might have been made out of scraps but it was really delicious. They served it with a poached egg on top. The atmosphere wasn’t the greatest but it was hard to beat the price­—65 cents for a heaping plate.