IN MY FAMILY IT WAS STACKWICHES AND DEAD DOG...

In those proverbial “good ol’ days” a mom or dad, constrained by lack of time or money, would clabber together a hodge-podge of what you would eat if you had time and what you had on hand and what you thought may or may not taste good together but what the hell...  I am certain that this often resulted in gustatory horrors of near biblical proportions and gave a whole generation a phobic dread of things called Chef’s Surprise or Seafood Fiesta or anything with the words layered or short-cut in their titles. This fear also generally encompasses foodstuffs with recognizable names but with the brand name of a tinned product inserted at a clever juncture, and all casseroles comically named after inedible or unappetizing objects. True, in some instances this is the wiser course, but to cast wide your umbrella to include all such dining opportunities under one turned up nose, as it were, you run a real risk of missing treats that may well already be on the culinary endangered species list. Between energy drinks and the all too invasive MacMeadowMuffin, fetched up thru the driver’s window under jaundiced yellow arches, we have lost touch with individual inventiveness. Where are those pre-ramen noodle dabblers in the kitchen arts… those who sought the philosopher’s stone using only a fridge full of leftovers and a stopwatch?  Remember the scene in Apollo 13 where the chief engineer dumps the box of stuff on the table and says to his crew, "This is what they have to work with. Let's bring 'em back safe." Before the mass marketing of breakfast-inna-bag, if you were running late for deer hunting or some other “on the go” lifestyle choice, you just scooped and ran… breakfast, lunch or dinner held together by a starch of some kind and consumed rather like a meat ice cream cone.

Sunday morning, at breakfast, I was given the opportunity to indulge in one of those classic familial treats from days gone by.  Our friends Lovely & Michelle were here from Quincy, on their way south, and Lovely stepped up to her family home plate and hit one out of the park.  Named after one child’s choice of pronunciation for the word g-r-a-n-d-p-a, it is called The Coby (cob-ee) Sandwich.  First you have to have fluffy, cheap white bread (toasted in the oven broiler so you can make a stack of them at once…) and SPAM (also broiled to perfection.) After that it’s just a question of assembling the bread and SPAM along with a fried egg, ketchup and a generous smear of, what else, grape jelly.

At this point some of you are, no doubt, casting about for a hazelnut biscotti to cleanse your taste buds and your imagination.  But then think about it for a minute… you have toast and jelly along with breakfast meat and fried eggs… how is this any different from all those other breakfasts you’ve eaten but with the measured improvement that you don’t have to wash a plate?

And yes, I am sure you could make this with 8 grain bread and smoked salmon and egg substitute layered with stone ground chipotle chutney and organic hackberry conserves.

But wouldn’t that be like giving a beautiful woman three breast implants?  Trying, unsuccessfully, to improve on perfection…

Bon apétite