Heart Attack Hash {Katie’s Favorite}

For Katie When She’s Old

This is second of my three posts about my children’s favorite birthday meals and is dedicated to Katie, my youngest child.  This has been her favorite meal since she was about 3 years old…that’s 19 years of Heart Attack Hash for almost every birthday.  I think that there have only been two birthdays that Katie asked for something else, both times requesting Joe’s Crab Shack.  Sometimes a girl just has to have a little change of pace.

Let me tell you a little bit about this meal of meals.  Try to maintain your dignity while reading the next sentence. There’s bacon, sausage, polska kielbasa, potatoes, onions, and cheese with some salt and pepper thrown in for good measure.  It is addicting and it is difficult to stop eating it once you start.  It’s one of those things where you say, “Okay this is my last bite….Okay, now this is my last bite….Okay, one more bite and then I’ll stop….Would someone please make me stop eating this….Okay, fine; then would someone please hurry up and eat the last bite so that we can all walk away from the table.”  I dunno; make a salad and some whole wheat rolls to go along with this dish.  It will bring you a measure of dietetic peace.

Heart Attack Hash became an all time family favorite when my kids were little.  We used to have a yearly camping trip with my husband’s extended family when our children were young and this dish was #1 on the hit parade every year.  It was the meal we all craved and our campsites would ring with the sounds of happy kids and grunting manly-man noises while the dinner was being prepared in multiple dutch ovens.  Although outrageously heavy, it was the perfect evening meal after a day filled with miles of hiking (and chasing Katie–she ran everywhere we went and was always a hair’s breadth away from disaster) and evenings cool enough to require coats.  The men would wrap the left-overs in foil packets and then heat them in the camp-fire the next morning for breakfast.  They would stand around eating out of the foil and make more manly-man grunting noises while shoveling plastic forksful of meat, potatoes, and gooey melted cheese in their mouths.

The name for this recipe was originally dubbed “Bear Lake Special” by the family member with whom the recipe had originated.  To me, the name seemed too innocuous for something as loaded as this little wonder.  I remember the first time I stood gobbling it up and making my own grunting noises, I thought, “I am going to have a heart attack from eating this and I don’t care.  What a way to go!”  After that, our family started calling it Heart Attack Hash, but everyone else still calls it Bear Lake Special.

I am absolutely certain that this has zero health benefits.  It is one of those things that I can only bring myself to make and eat once a year.  But, it must be made and eaten because it is a treasured family recipe and it is as laden with wonderful memories as it is with calories and cholesterol.

While it is at its carnal best when made outdoors in a cast iron dutch oven, it can also be made indoors in basic kitchenware with excellent results.