food

Spam (and scalloped potatoes)

/ wvfurandroot / 1 Comment

Comfort Food

It’s really stupid, but I particularly like Spam.  Yes, Spam –the luncheon meat – spiced ham. I was raised on it.  And then when we moved to Hawaii, we discovered it was like the state food.  I think their Spam consumption rivals their pineapple consumption.   Hawaiians eat Spam by the truckload.  You can get a Spam breakfast sandwich at the McDonald’s.  There is Spam sushi.  I am not making this up.

I like it fried with eggs.  I like it right out of the can at room temperature.  An old friend of my mother’s used to grind it up and make a ham salad sort of thing with it.  That was good too.

But I particularly like my Spam with scalloped potatoes.  That’s how my mom served it.  But she used Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom Soup to make the potatoes.  Later, she started buying the boxed kind.

When I was 15 or so, I went on a tear to learn how to cook things from scratch.  I was given the Betty Crocker Cookbook.  I still have it.  I still use it.  Their scalloped potato recipe is to die for.  Really.  Well, it is with some modifications.  As I learned to cook, I also learned that most recipes geared toward the general populace are lacking in spice and pizazz.  I am very fond of savory foods. And pizazz.

Continue reading →

COVID-19: Day 44: Getting a groove on.

/ wvfurandroot / 1 Comment

I’m settling into this.

I haven’t had much to talk about. I work. I  clean. I eat. I nap.  I sleep.  Day in and day out.

Yesterday, a friend approached me with a writing project.  Woo Hoo!  I need assignments to write and this one even came with a writing prompt.

“and she spilled it before he could tell her no”  — prompt from Bobby Lee Messer

I had to turn that into a 90-second spoken word story.  I did.  It takes a long while to write 250 cohesive and coherent words.  I figure I’ve got 5 hours and change into the latest draft.  Shorter is harder.

Tonight, I’m kinda embarrassed to say, I broke quarantine and had my mom in for dinner.  I cooked tacos.  By the time I carried them down the hill they were going to be cold.  We can’t be having cold (and wet, it’s raining) tacos.  So, we sat almost six feet apart and had dinner together.  You may recall that tacos My Way are my favorite meal.

It was nice to have an in-person conversation.  I did, however, unceremoniously throw her out once we were both eating. It’s one thing to bend rules.  It’s another to shatter them.

 

COVID-19: Day 4

/ wvfurandroot / Leave a comment

Today, I scored toilet paper and West Virginia finally confirmed its first case of COVID-19.

Yes, I ventured out to the Kroger again.  I needed some things and rumor had it that the store had been restocked.  Besides TP, there was an urgent need for critter food, bleach, and cherry pie.  Plus a $100 worth of other stuff.  My larder is stocked.  All I’m missing now is hamburger which I may or may not pursue.

I worked from home today.  It was a weird workday.  I started at roughly 7 a.m. instead of my usual 9:30 a.m.  I roared through email (there isn’t much at 7 a.m., but more than you would think) and then did the dishes so as to clear the kitchen table.  I moved the laptop to the table and spread out my work materials.  It was time to descend into the bowels of my organization’s webpage.  I always get a bit nervous when tweaking the webpage.  It’s a wonderful webpage, professionally designed, and it’s beyond my skill level to maintain.  Every change provokes prayer.

At 11 or so, I started ruffling around for something to eat.   The first snack of many.  I called my boss to see if she missed me.  (She didn’t.)  I spoke with a co-worker.  Called my mother.  Worked on some photo editing.  Rinse and repeat.  That was my day prior to the Kroger.

I ventured out at 4 pm.  I was surprised, but not really, by the number of people out and about.  The Kroger looked like a war zone.  I noticed the absence of background music.  There is no soundtrack to the apocalypse.

Post-Kroger, I have a kitchen full of work materials and groceries.  I have too much food for my available storage.  I generally do my shopping for at most a week ahead of time and usually not even that.  Then there’s the fact that I have enough for three meals a day instead of the usual one and a half.  There’s food everywhere.  Three (3!) pints of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream almost didn’t fit into the freezer.

I need to find a rhythm to this new life.  Right now, I still feel as if I’m waiting for the shoe to drop.  I thought that feeling would occur when they finally diagnosed a case here.  But, well, nope.  There’s still free-floating anxiety.  Oh, and cherry pie.