The Daily Write: My recipe (July 29, 2012. 12 minutes)

My recipe

You need a Teflon pan. A block of Tillamook cheddar cheese.  A grater. A stove. Heat up the pan. Grate the cheese. Put it on the hot pan and watch it melt and bubble. Cook it longer than you think you should and soon you'll be able to pull the whole thing up off the pan and eat it. If you want something sweet and there's nothing in the house, you can mash up soft butter with brown sugar. It almost tastes like cookie dough.

If you want to shock your friends, you can pull out your mom's boyfriend's daughter's placenta from the freezer and ask them to guess what it is. When they figure out it's not frozen berries, you can tell them and watch them react in wide-eyed shock. It's fun.

There's never much to eat in the house. We usually have orange juice made from a can. It sucks when the can is still frozen and we're out of juice and need it. Then we have to run it under warm water a long time, or pry it out until the hunk of frozen orange citrus plops into the bottom of the green plastic pitcher we keep in the fridge. Then use a wooden spoon to mash it around with water until it turns into juice. It's really annoying and you can't get all the chunks out.

One time I was really hungry and I wanted beef stew so I opened a can of Dinty Moore but I couldn't wait to heat it up. I grabbed a piece of potato right out of the can and put it in my mouth. Only it turned out it was cow fat and not a potato and I couldn't get the horrible globs of fat from coating the inside of my whole mouth.

Once a week my mom would take me and the twins to King's Table for the all you can eat buffet. They had turkey and meatloaf and macaroni n' cheese. Plus mashed potatoes and gravy. I would stop in the chocolate shop first and get sugar free candy. The twins would make huge soft serve sundaes all by themselves. It was fun.

I worked in my friend Lori's mom's sandwich shop for a while. I didn't get paid. It was just something to do when I was skipping school. Only I thought it would be cool to give people extra of everything, seeing as I was always hungry. So I made the ham two inches high and then piled on extra cheese and mayo. No one seemed to like it. Some even complained. I got fired.

Lynne was on welfare and had a lot of mouths to feed. She knew how to stretch a food stamp dollar. She made really yummy casseroles. I always wanted to stay at her house when it was dinner time but she always wanted me to leave. I tried to get myself invited, but I guess that would have cost more than she had and besides, I usually wanted thirds.

Me and Kristi used to go to the mini-mart gas station and get Jo Jos, wedges of crispy chicken-fried potatoes with ranch dressing for dip. If I weren't allergic to gluten now, I'd go get some Jo Jo's from Safeway cause I like them that much.

My dad's specialty when I was little was barbecue steak. Only when I was six and had just moved in with him after he picked us up from our grandma's apartment in Oregon, he was on some kind of a steak diet and when he cooked them under the broiler, they always caught fire. That was scary. But not as bad as the time he reached his hand into the pantry to get something and instead pulled his arm out holding a snake and screaming. Also, one time the Nutter Butters on top of the fridge got infested with wormy larvae. I never liked peanut butter after that.