It is 2020 and We Are Food Blogging, Baby!

Sometimes, say during a pandemic, you are in a corner store and you spy stacks of corn tortillas on the shelf. You stock up on them because you’re trying to reduce the frequency of your shopping trips — and because tortillas are a way of life.  But some of them go stale before you get to them. Don’t be sad. This is the perfect time to make migas.  "What are migas?" you might ask — especially if you are my spouse from the East Coast. I think of migas as a kind of Tex-Mex cousin to chilaquiles, another dish that I love (and obsessively eat). They both make magic out of stale tortillas, creating that most tasty food texture of crispy-gone-soggy . Though they're similar in that way, they diverge in the details.  Both often have eggs, but whereas eggs are a key feature of migas, they're merely one option for chilaquiles. The star component of chilaquiles — the thing that can make it or break it — is the sauce. Migas is less intimidating to make because you can ...

Last Tuesday, a friend died unexpectedly. On Wednesday I sat in bed until noon. When I finally got up, I opened my fridge, surveyed its contents, and seeing the container of leftover white rice, I decided to make Spamsilog. First, I smashed some garlic cloves and chopped them, then heated the pieces in olive oil. When the garlic turned fragrant, I dumped the old rice into the pan, breaking up chunks to make garlic rice, similar to the way Brian blogged about it . With a wooden spatula, I turned the rice over and over, pressing down on it sometimes. The longer you wait, the crispier the rice becomes — a reward for patience. A ways into the frying, I thought to add some green onions and hastily snipped a length of some that had been re-growing in a jar. As the rice cooked, I asked my spouse H to slice Spam. I always keep a can of Spam in the pantry, though I don’t eat it much these days. It’s there for emergencies. Now it felt like an emergency. As I browned the slices of Sp...