A few of my work colleagues informed me that this week, Nova 93.7 FM replayed their Oh My Blog segment featuring The Food Pornographer. If you’re a new reader who’s checking the site out after hearing about it on the radio, welcome!
Regular readers have no doubt been expecting this post. Yep, while Jac was away last weekend, I did what I always do when home alone for a weekend: I cracked open a can of SPAM and got cooking.
I slept in on Saturday and then got up to make something for brunch. The old SPAM favourite: fried SPAM and egg, with baked beans, corn and rice.
I really should’ve gone to the shops earlier and grabbed some green beans and some tinned pineapple to make fried rice with. I’ve really been craving fried rice specifically with SPAM, pineapple, green beans, with lots of onion and garlic and the rice flavoured with tomato sauce and a little black pepper. I could’ve gone out and done a little shopping, but to be honest, I just couldn’t be bothered. So since there there were no green beans in the fridge and no tinned pineapple in pantry, I cooked up a batch of fried rice for my dinner featuring SPAM, mushrooms and corn, with lots of onion and garlic (no matter what, we always have onion and garlic!) and oyster sauce to flavour the rice. Exactly my kind of meal, bursting with savoury flavours and distinctive textures: springy salty cubes of SPAM with slightly browned crisp edges, squeaky rubbery mushrooms and juicy corn kernels that popped tantalisingly between my teeth.
I ate rice all weekend. I get withdrawals if I don’t eat rice every couple of days at least. My mum’s like me; she can’t go for very long without eating rice. She is quite perplexed by my younger sister Juji, I think; Juji doesn’t care much about rice but gets cravings for potatoes and pasta.What do you need to eat on a regular basis? Yes, need!
I had a quiet weekend home alone. I didn’t go out at all. I just blogged, read, exercised, slept and ate. Lots and lots of “ate”. Of course, that’s not unusual.
I'm TFP, a food blogger from Perth, Western Australia.
{ 18 comments… read them below or add one }
Ice creams!
Doesn’t matter if it’s from McDonalds or Baskin Robbins or Ben and Jerry’s, sunny or rainy or even snowy days, happy or sad days, in the pink of health or coughing incessantly (like now), 7 times a week or 2 times a day, at home or when I am traveling, over laughters or tears, there is always a reason for me to have ice creams :)
For me it’s pasta. If I don’t eat pasta every second day I’ll get a strong craving. Ah… us Italians!
I KNEW IT WAS COMING…. hmmm spam…
I honestly CANT go more than a week without chips and salsa… I have them every Tuesday at “Taco Tuesday” at The Taco Hut. And most Saturdays I make it to snack on all day long. I love the crunchy fried corn chips heavily salted and some chunky spicy pico de gallo.
Being in Sothern California so close to Mexico, there is a lot of Mexican influence to our food. Are there Mexican places in AU?
Rice, for certain — I give my rice cooker a workout at least two or three times a week, and if I make rice for my evening meal then for certain I’ll have leftover rice for breakfast, usually with a can of tuna, soy sauce, and some wasabi or sometimes left over stir-fry topped with egg.
Spam eggs and rice is such a perfect meal!
As for my need-to-eat food. . .rice is a good one. But I think I will have to go with cheeeeeeese. Mmmm.
Sushi!!!!
Oh my gosh, I crave sushi on a daily basis and if I don’t get it every couple of days it just gets worse!!
TFP, I bought some spam recently (Spam lite, actually, as I’m watching the calories…) and cooked it up with some rice… but Boy refuses to eat it so I tend to be left with half a can. I’m dying to try your eggy-spam with rice, though… yumyumyum!!! I will eat it with spaghetti, mind you, because I don’t like baked bean at all.
Nuts! Our local supermarket has created a “nut bar” where there is a “nut barista” who dishes out nuts by the ounce in all these lovely flavors & varieties. It’s just made it TOO easy for me to have nuts in the house ALL the time and pretend (when I’m particularly lazy) that a handful of nuts (brazil, hazelnuts, pecans, macadamia, blanched, roasted, salted, vanilla-cinnamon’ed, plain, chipotle’ed…) can constitute a full-fledged meal.
I cannot go a day without Pop Secret Homestyle (with real butter and salt) microwave popcorn. I must eat it from a pasta strainer lined with a paper towel, before bed, while reading. (What the heck, nothing like a bedtime popcorn fix to make sure you floss!!!
I have been seriously addicted since 1999 and am so glad they came out with the snack size, which tastes different but is ok… not to be confused with the 100 calorie snack size (which sucks). I have even eaten this as “a healthy whole grain breakfast” on many occasions!
ahhh spam and rice and egg- so asian! i love it but haven’t bought spam or “luncheon meat” for a long long time! its so convenient though! sometimes i wonder what the meat is actually made of.. lets not think about that.
I can’t live without japanese food! My bf and I usually have japanese at least once a week, lately we haven’t been able to because of exams which is not good as I have been suffering major sushi withdrawal symptoms. In fact just speaking about this makes me want to go and have some japanese food so I am going to treat myself to lunch
RICE!!!!
typical Chinese. Hahaha~ 2 days without rice and i get fidgety.
Wine.
Coffee.
Chocolate.
All the usual vices. :)
Lydia,
I love ice cream, but because I get gluggy from dairy products, I can’t eat it as often as I’d like. If I had no ill effects from dairy products, I’d drink banana smoothies and milkshakes all the time too.
Alessandra,
I guess the pasta is for you like rice is for me.
Bryan,
Yes, we have Mexican places here. Mostly in international food halls or as stand-alone restaurants; no chains (no Taco Bells, no Taco huts). One of my favourite Mexican restaurants is a place called Pancho’s, which we went to a couple of years ago to celebrate my 31st birthday:
http://www.thefoodpornographer.com/?p=284
AZ,
I love rice for breakfast too! With whatever’s left over, or some tinned baked beans, or a fried egg. Really simple and savoury and satisfying. Cereal just doesn’t cut it for me in the morning.
Driver B,
I think Jac would agree with you on cheese. She loves cheese and definitely needs to consume it regularly.
Erin,
I like sushi but have to be in the mood for it. I go through phases – sushi galore, and then nothing for a while, and then sushi-crazy again. Yes, another SPAM eater!!!! I also like (though haven’t made it for a while) pasta stir-fry with SPAM – cubes of SPAM, mushrooms, soyaroni, soy sauce and a little sesame oil. Yummy yummy! I’ve frozen SPAM before, and it was ok to use from frozen later down the track. Why does your bf refuse to eat SPAM? Because of what it is or because he doesn’t like the taste? Oh well. More for you. :)
Denisse,
I like nuts but they aren’t something I crave. My favourite nuts are hazelnuts, cashews, macadamias and peanuts. Your nut bar with all the delicious flavours and coatings sounds great! I love flavoured macadamias especially, and candied nuts. Least favourite nut is the brazil nut, just too much nut for me. :)
deborah,
Mmmm, I love popcorn. I’ve been thinking about getting a popcorn maker so I can just buy the plain corn kernels and pop (and flavour) my own. We have yummy microwave popcorn here, but they tend to be butter flavour, and sometimes I’d be much happier with just plain old salted.
ilovefood,
Since we moved offices, I have missed the great Japanese food we had at the old place – the Japanese places I can get lunch from now are okay, but aren’t anywhere as good.
FRESH.OYSTERS,
I think most of my readers are with me on rice! Maybe that’s why they like this site, we have similar tastes and cravings. :-P
Cellobella,
Hahaha. Do you like any chocolate, or are you a milk/dark/white person? I read an interesting article recently on Serious Eats, which discusses “Is white chocolate really chocolate?” http://www.seriouseats.com/required_eating/2008/06/white-chocolate-how-its-made-flavor-appeal.html
chocolate, peanut butter n bread, got to have them everyday. i am serious, i eat chocolate everyday. and i eat bread n peanut butter at least six days a week. very bad i know.
White Bread! And I was recently diagnosed with Coeliac, so I am more than devistated. Generally I will have a min of 2 slices a day, with a max of infinity I just love sandwiches, toasties, open grills, toast, everything bready.
I hope I can find a good wheat free substitute.
I also need to eat rice regularly– it’s not a “real” meal if it doesn’t include rice. My stomach is true Filipina. :p
I LOVE SPAM! I could never give up eating spam. Our helper cooks spam with brown sugar and I eat it with freshly steamed white rice. Yum yum!
Fiona,
I love peanut butter but don’t eat it often. I prefer smooth to crunchy, and I like a sandwich that has peanut butter on one slice of bread and butter on the other. I think the smell of a good quality peanut butter is one of the most wonderful smells in the world. I can sit there with my nose in the jar and be perfectly content.
Beck,
Sorry to hear about your diagnosis – a major bummer, since you love bread so much.
I don’t know a lot about wheat-free products, but I’m sure there’s a lot of info out there on the net and if there are any good substitutes, someone will have written about it on a site somewhere. Good luck!
Feanne,
Agreed. Gotta have rice for a proper meal! Oooh, SPAM cooked with brown sugar. Interesting. But what might also be good (in a similar vein as brown sugar)is SPAM in a maple syrup glaze! Hahahaha, how to make a bad food even more bad! :)
Rice! Noodles! Bread! And Pasta (which is Italian for noodles of course) — All the good carbs (at least good to me), i need. Yes, NEED!
Foodie,
Yep, we definitely have that in common – I can’t live without carbs like rice and noodles. Protein and carbs, that’s me!