Dinner Leads To Dishwashing

     Let's start with the dinner.  Yesterday evening, the weather turned a little nasty.  About five p.m., heavy  rain and light thunderstorm cried and grumbled their way through town.  I decided colcannon would be good for supper* on a day like that.

     Colcannon's an Irish treat and not too difficult to make -- good mashed potatoes mixed with cooked greens, typically cabbage or kale, and a little bacon or ham, served with melted butter and parsley.  I found a recipe that looked interesting, with the butter just browned and scallions (I used most of a large white onion left over from grilled hamburgers on Saturday) cooked with the cabbage, and made a nice big pot of the stuff.  You fry the cabbage and onion separately (in the same pan used to brown the butter) and deglaze with a little chicken broth, adding it to the mashed potatoes before serving. I put most of a couple of diced slices of "country ham" in with the potatoes and a little with the cabbage, and skipped adding salt since the ham's got plenty.  A bit of fresh-ground black pepper was all the seasoning it needed.

     It turned out nicely.  Tam had two bowls!  And then I was left with a big pot holding a small amount of a mashed potatoes and greens mix that can turn to concrete if left for later, so I turned to loading the dishwasher after my TV show.†  It's easy enough to clean up before it sets and I soon had the machine hissing and chuckling away under the counter.

     We use a dry-erase board to keep track of dishwasher status.  With two people in the house and loading and unloading being catch-as-can, you have to do something.  But "dirty," "clean" and "empty" get boring.

     So I came up with another way to say it.
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* I habitually call the evening meal "dinner," which may be a Hoosierism or Midwesternism.  That was the term used when and where I grew up.  The odd thing is, the big mid-day meal eaten after church on Sunday was referred to as "Sunday dinner," too.  Breakfasts and regular lunches tended to be small and simple, so perhaps in my dialect, "dinner" means a large sit-down meal.

† Ascension, which is kind of interesting, though full of anachronisms.  Perhaps they will be explained; at present, I am wondering if the writers just don't remember what the world was like before handheld devices.