Mom's recipe for gourmet potatoes yields great results, but they come at a terrible price. The cook, in this case me, has to mix the ingredients by hand. Normally I enjoy squishing food between my fingers, but not when the main ingredient is frozen hash browns. Those suckers are COLD! This is the kind of cold that hurts so bad you almost wet your pants -- the kind of cold you feel wading in the snowmelt runoff of Spearfish Creek. And my own mother made me stand there up to my wrists in Arctic agony and pose for a picture.

Photo by my really, really mean Mom