These are a few of my favorite things . . .

Over the last couple years, Peg has made a project of sneaking actual food into my daily menu. There will be spinach hiding under my eggs in the morning on weekends, homemade dips on gamedays that are a swirl of the colors of all the peppers and onions and leafy stuff blended within, and a genuine dearth of the fried things that are the staples of Southern cuisine. She assures me it's for my own good, what with my tissue-paper alimentary tract and surging girth and blood pressure in this exercise-free pandemic world. It's all delightful, and lovingly made, and I'm learning to live in this brave new world of homemade food.

But Thanksgiving is a time to remember, not only family moments past but meals past. P grew up on a farm, in a place where there was no processed food and a Yoohoo or a Coke were a rare treat. I, on the other hand, am a child of the burbs, whose sainted mother was married before she learned to cook. The family lore is that we started with Fritos and Falstaff beer from the time I was two. Dad would watch TV in the evenings and feed me both until I teetered backwards around the coffee table and eventually dropped to the ground. I guess that explains a lot.

Eventually, by the time I was in high school at least, we did in fact develop a menu of delights comprised almost entirely of foods that teams of scientists had created in a lab to protect our health.

One early favorite was the fried Spam sandwich.

To prepare, open the can of Spam without cutting yourself, although a little blood in the pan adds a certain ferrous tanginess. Heat a nonstick pan to well beyond the manufacturer's recommendation, and place strips of Spam a quarter inch thick into the pan, flipping to achieve a crunchy outside and coolish goo in the middle. Take two pieces of white bread (Wonder is the best) and toast, then slather with Miracle Whip, the poor man's mayonnaise. Place your two slivers of Spam between the pieces of lubricated Wonder bread, and enjoy.

As a variation if one is in a hurry, this dish is almost as good with the Spam straight out of the can. You get a little of that gelatinous stuff in the sandwich as a bonus.

For a one-pot meal guaranteed to delight on a cold evening, it was tough to beat chili mac, which involved combining a box of Kraft Dinner with a can of Hormel chili.

They used to scoop mounds of this stuff onto our plates during our pregame meal, prepared lovingly by the team mothers before every Hemet Bulldog game during my senior year. This may explain our 4-6 record.

Another delightful use of Kraft Dinner was that staple of our household, macaroni and cheese with cut-up hotdogs in it. When I was a newly separated guy, I pretty much lived on this stuff. And beer. Lots of beer.

The key to success here is to keep it simple--no fancy sausages, just plain hotdogs, and only use the mac and cheese with the powdered cheeselike substance in the little foil package in the box. Garnish with ketchup, if you're feeling adventurous.

But the hotdog food group is so, so much more versatile than that (hey, you have your food pyramid, I have mine). With the advent of the microwave, when I was in ninth grade, we daring cooks started making "snot dogs".

Again we are using our old friend Wonder bread, with a Kraft American single holding the whole mess together. The dish is adequately cooked in the microwave when the ends of the hotdog explode like some priapic disaster.

Finally, that most versatile of dinner meats sometimes found itself lovingly rolled in canned crescent roll dough, for that most delightful of preservative-laden treats, the pig in a blanket.

Friday nights meant new dietary horizons in Texas forty-something years ago. For the less adventuresome there were ballpark nachos:

You had to eat them fast during a late season Plano Wildcats game on a cold night, lest the cheese cool and congeal to form a skin of rubbery goodness on the outside. Then again, it sort of sealed in the flavor of the squeeze cheese and now soggy chips below.

But to really experience Texas football as a gourmand, one had to try the Frito pie:

The internet will tell you there are lots of fancy ways to create this most Texan of dishes, but the only real way to serve it is right there in the Frito bag, ladled with chili and garnished with cheese and fresh cut onions and jalapenos. And the chili must be Wolf brand chili out of a can--this is non-negotiable.

The football-centered dietary insult continued at home on Saturdays with the Dawgs and Sundays with the Cowboys and Falcons. Once my folks had established separate households, each had its own gameday dining tradition.

Mom always fired up the microwave to create her world-renowned mystery dip. The process involved microwaving a block of cream cheese until it was pliable, then dumping half a jar of La Victoria medium-hot salsa on top until we had a blob of pink spicy goodness to enjoy with our Doritos.

Dad and Johnnie took a somewhat less ambitious approach, opting instead for a tub of French onion dip and a big bag of Ruffles. I'd eat most of it in one sitting and wash it down with several Cokes. Of course, there were consequences later in the evening of dumping down my gullet a couple pounds of viscous stuff my body did not recognize as food.

The story behind my current need for daily Prilosecs and a tub of antacids in my car at all times is starting to come into focus as I write this.

After moving to California I became the dietary ward of my doting grandmother, who got up at 5:30 each morning to make Grandpa's coffee and prepare for me a big plate of creamed chipped beef on toast, otherwise known by its initials, "SOS":

There's the star of this post, Wonder bread, figuring prominently again, this time along with chipped beef from a jar and lots of buttery white gravy. I gained 46 pounds, on purpose, during my seven months or so at their house on Rim Road, and SOS was a key to that success.

A few weeks ago P and I stopped in a little town for breakfast, and the menu included not only SOS but Grandma's other Pennsylvania breakfast staple, scrapple. Unable to decide, I ordered both and was literally curling my toes with delight at each bite. I was sixteen again, in the loving care of my grandparents. A food flashback.

Eventually I moved back with my folks, and breakfast changed a bit. I developed a taste for Peanut Butter Captain Crunch floating in store-bought chocolate milk, preferably served in a mixing bowl. I was burning a lot of calories playing football back then.

I could go on, because there was so much more. Cheez Whiz on Wheat Thins. Sangria and pork rinds in my lost youth days. Spaghetti with Heinz Ketchup as the sauce in college. Microwave burritos containing some sort of gooey mystery meat and bean sauce.

It seems to me as I write this that it's a pity Anthony Bourdain is not still alive, and that we don't have a time machine to do a No Reservations show in Plano, Texas in 1979. We'd have ourselves a time. Instead, I just find myself looking backwards as I often do in these days leading up to Thanksgiving, to family and our tacky white-bread folkways and the menu of processed food that, along with love, was the common thread in it all. And just like that, hunger gives way to nostalgia and reverie.