My Dinner With Bigfoot

Okay, last week should have softened 'em up, and this week they will be more than willing to order pizza, as long as it looks as bad as what you did last week. I know they say, when creating garnishes, that the first bite is with the eye, but I've found that in reality, as opposed to in trendy four star restaurants, the first bite is with the horrified ear of the imagination.

So you start by calling and instant messaging around on the pretext of finding out when people will be home, but in actuality you're just putting them on notice that You Will Be Cooking. Make sure you find out when they'll be home first, and then explain casually that you've got a very special meal planned. This hasn't been going on long enough in your home at least for people to know the range of bad, and they will most likely agree to come home anyway, just to see what you've got in mind now.

In my home, they already know how bad it can get, and while we are all creative occasionally, I am the undisputed master of sadistic cookery. But most of the time they get white rice and frozen pot stickers and random bottled sauce, or a fairly reasonable lasagna or citrus chicken I do, or just some random noodles out of a box with Spam stirred in, which believe it or not counts as a decent meal around here. I suppose I should note that most of the time it's nobody's night to cook, and we operate under Forage Rules, where you find something frozen and heat it up for yourself. (Forage Rules: Anybody who knows where the freezer and microwave are kept gets to eat. Anybody who doesn't know where they are or how to use them, doesn't. This is your fork, if you lose it you will not be issued another.)

So when I ask who's going to be home and when, it's not an automatic Spam And Cheez Whiz Quiche Red Alert, it might just be when should I start the rice cooker. I find this introduces an element of existential dread into the whole thing that people really appreciate. So fair warning doesn't necessarily mean they'll come up with an excuse to eat out, though it might mean they'll eat a burger on the way home and pretend they haven't, but for you, dear readers, odds are good their survival instincts haven't cut in yet and they're still stuck in the bemused curiosity phase.

In any event, tonight we'll be making something that smells good but looks awful, and yes, that means Spam. There's something distinctly unfoodlike about the color of Spam, even if you like the flavor, which is basically salty ham lunchmeat. We're out of leftover rice at the moment, and I could make some fresh, but why bother.

What I do have is a Gladware container full of leftover mashed potato fakes. They're Betty Crocker Potato Buds, regular flavor, made according to the package directions and the leftovers refrigerated fast. You can probably make some to start with, but they really need to be refrigerated for about eight hours after you cook them, so they clump up and get weird. (No, really, that's a good thing.)

We also have some leftover canned corn, so we'll be throwing that in if nobody ate it yet, and a can of pineapple tidbits.

My advice is to just cube the Spam. I tried it with a melon baller once, looking for a more festive way to serve it, but there was, really, a lot of wastage, so I don't bother anymore.

Our sauce tonight will be a bottled Sweet & Sour, but we're going to add a little red food coloring for that really nice laser red color.

So, heat up your wok, and dump the Spam in. You just want it browned for the moment, so keep stirring it. Then throw in your pineapple, and you can add some ginger if you like, give that two minutes or so. Next the mashed potatoes, breaking it into clumps about the size of cauliflower florets. So stir that all around till everything's nicely browned, by which time it should all be cooked through, and then throw in the corn, which won't take too long at all to heat up.

Pull it all off the heat and dump it into a bowl, add the sauce, toss gently to coat. You could garnish with parsley, but we don't do that much in my house because my partner, a Penn & Teller fan, and I have spent the last several years playing their Parsley Game, where you try to sneak yours onto their plate and to keep theirs off yours. So I'll probably go with thin slices of orange and maybe some extra pineapple tidbits in sort of a flower design. These thoughtful touches mean so much.

Once again, you'll need to thunk it onto the table, clatter the forks next to it, and yell "Are you guys gonna come eat or what?" By now they know the rules, and believe me, that sauce is a deeply disturbing red, especially contrasted with the Spam pink. So you might be able to get halfway through the dish-title-as-description before they're arguing over who's buying the pizza.

Enjoy that, you've earned it. But be aware that they're probably not ordering a ham-and-pineapple. And if you do find yourself eating Sweet & Sour Spam And Mashed Potatoes With Pineapple And Corn, relax, it's actually not bad. And that's not just me saying that because I'm crazy, the kitchen bigfoot agree.