Blam This Piece of Crap Day: Let's blam some Spam! (Plus bonus blamming)

Well, it's the day you've all been waiting for!

I'll admit, I didn't think up a good idea to celebrate BTPoC Day until it was upon us. But then I realized I had not one, but two different examples of BLAMming ready to go.

Let's cover the tastiest one first: Spam fried rice. This recipe was slightly modified from one made by Seonkyoung Longest and it is YUM.

Yeah, yeah, Spam is a registered trademark, yadda yadda, bite me, Hormel. Anyway, this can be made with any kind of "canned luncheon meat" you have on hand, as long as the flavor isn't too exotic. I recommend using lower-sodium generic spam if you can find it, because the sauce we're gonna make for this has a fair amount of sodium already.

I have long held a pink-meat prejudice that dates from my teenhood, when my working mom would occasionally make jazzed-up ramen for dinner. If I came in late for dinner, which I occasionally did, I'd get ramen noodles so soft they were falling apart, garnished with shriveled peas and cold chunks of spam. Bluergh. So for a long time I wouldn't eat spam. This recipe brought me around to liking it again. Maybe you'll feel the same way.

Anyhoo, get that spam out of the can and cut it into 1/4" thick slices, then into dice.

And if you have cats, better put them somewhere else. Charlie and Millie became very interested in our kitchen-related doings the minute they heard that can open. But spam of any kind has too much fat and salt and mystery amendments to be good for them. (Sorry, kittens)

Four eggs. There go our next four mortgage payments. Scramble 'em up.

A medium-sized white/yellow/brown onion, chopped or diced. This is optional, but Captain Midnight likes it.

A few cloves of garlic, finely chopped, minced or pressed. You can add as much or as little as you like, but at least three good-sized cloves, I think. 

A whole lotta rice ("6 cups," says Captain Midnight). It doesn't have to be fresh from the rice cooker, like this. In fact, fried rice benefits from using rice that's a day old and starting to dry out. (Yes, another piece of crap to BLAM!)

Also a whole lotta green onions. Use these even if you don't use the white onion; they taste different and a little bit set aside makes a very pretty garnish for the finished bowl.
 

Homemade teriyaki sauce. Refer to the Seonkyoung Longest recipe for full details because I'm lazy.

Oh, okaaaaay. Briefly: 2 parts soy sauce, 2 parts sake, 2 parts mirin, 1 part sugar. For this batch of fried rice, we did "tablespoons" for parts. You can scale it up or down depending on your tastes and how large a batch you're making.

And, of course, a wok. No, it doesn't have to be 35 years old like this one. You don't even need a wok, but you do need a pan that can handle high heat and a lot of fast sauteing, and has enough volume to hold a lot of rice.

Not shown, but used: vegetable oil, a little sesame oil, some cut-up slivers of nori if you like it, and some sesame seeds. And maybe some sriracha.

Now, what happened next went fast enough that I didn't take pictures, but:

Captain Midnight prepped all the ingredients beforehand. He got the wok screaming hot (yay gas stove!) and put in a tablespoon or two of vegetable oil. When it was hot, he threw in the egg. It immediately puffed around the edges. He tossed the egg around until it was about three-quarters cooked, then fished it all out into a bowl. Then he added a tiny bit of oil and the chunks of spam. These he cooked, gently moving them constantly, until they started to get crispy (the first rule of improving spam: improve the texture). Once they were nice and crisped up, he fished them out so he could cook the yellow onion. (If you're not using this, don't take out the spam; just move right on to the garlic.)

Onion in. He cooked it just until it softened and started to brown. Then in went the garlic, and he tossed it around just until it started to smell good. Back in with the spam; added the rice. He stirred it about until things were well incorporated, then drizzled the teriyaki sauce around the edges of the wok. That was thoroughly mixed in. As the rice absorbed the sauce and started to get dry again, he threw the egg back in and chopped it up a bit (you want fairly large chunks of egg in this -- I mean, if you're going to pay for eggs, you might as well be able to taste them!). Off the heat, he added just a touch of sesame oil for flavor, three-quarters of the green onions, some sesame seeds, gave it all a good toss and it was ready.

This was promptly plated up and sprinkled with additional green onions.

I prefer my fried rice without nori on top.

Captain Midnight prefers his with LOTS of nori on top. And some sriracha for good measure.

Remember what I said about the cats? Yup.

No, Millie, you cannot have some.

Both the cats did get some strips of nori, aka Tasty Green Fish Paper. And great was the omming and nomming thereof. So a good time was had by all.

And now for the Bonus Blam: a thrift store special!

About two weeks ago I ventured into the local Goodwill looking for sundries. What I found was a very large ball of red yarn with three sets of knitting needles shanked into the middle of it. Whoever had owned it before had started knitting a scarf with it, but had gotten bored with the project and ended up donating it to Goodwill.

Well, I ripped it back to the beginning, and after two or three tries with different patterns, I finally settled on this one.

This is variously called a basketweave or checkerboard pattern, it's fully reversible and it works up fast enough that even though I'm a slow knitter, it's nearly done. I will either give it to the Red Scarf Project or pass it on to someone else in the community who needs or wants it.

So that was our Blam This Piece of Crap Day. How was yours?