mexican crap

My family absolutely loves Mexican Crap, a pseudo-ethnic dish we got from one of those recipe books they sell by the registers at the grocery store. It consists of ground beef (I use ground turkey or chicken instead), Mexicorn (corn with red and green peppers), salsa, and chili powder, all served over rice. Sprinkle with cheese and serve to the family, then wait for my older brother to poke it and say, “This looks like bat barf!” (See also: “Can I have another plate? Someone puked on mine.”)

We open with a view of my kitchen, which is somewhat cleaner than last time (I finally washed the sink full of Tupperware) but still cluttered with empty Diet Pepsi cans and a grease-stained Papa John’s box. Yours truly, the Dumbass Gourmet, is chattering away to The Best Friend, a cell phone pinched between my ear and shoulder, while scraping ground chicken into a pan. We’re talking about Bridezillas and weddings, a conversation that moves me to underscore my points by gesturing with a spoon despite the fact that it’s got little pieces of chicken stuck to it.

The chicken is nearly done by the time I figure out that I forgot to put the rice on, so into the pot it goes while the timer counts down from 15 minutes. We’re talking a mile a minute as I tell her about an article I read about the first year of marriage when I smell something burning. Not to worry — that’s what hood vents are for. Our conversation is interrupted several times as the rice keeps boiling over no matter how low I set the burner, and I finally, regretfully, let her go after I dump grease down the sink without thinking about it.

It’s time to put in the salsa, and I am momentarily blinded by my own genius as I think of a way to get the last dregs of salsa out of the jar: I will pour in the Mexicorn (which comes packed in corn juice), and the juice will get all the salsa off the sides of the jar. This is all fine and good until I dump corn all over the sink as I transfer it to the jar and — crap! — now corn and salsa are stuck to the inside of the salsa jar. Humbled, I scrape it out with my spoon and mix everything together. I suppose not all ideas can be good ones, hmm?

The rice is still simmering away as I pull a block of cheese from the fridge to grate with our horrid cheese grater. This thing is the bane of my existence, as I haven’t figured out a way to use it without getting grated cheese everywhere. Crap again, now the timer for the rice is going off, the rice is burning to the pot, and I have cheese all over myself. But DG perseveres, and here is the result, beautifully posed atop the Papa John’s box:

Here’s a glimpse of what it looks like before it’s covered in cheese:

If I were to imagine what bat barf looked like, I’m pretty sure I’d come up with something similar to this, but with more blood. Bon appetit!