Spam and egg sandwiches

A whole crowd of us have been frequenting L&L Hawaiian Barbecue recently (it's just north of Provo High). Their main appeal seems to be that they sell genuine Hawaiian food. Until recently, I had to plead ignorance on what exactly that meant -- I mean, I've had ham and pineapple on pizzas, sure, and I've had sweet-and-sour chicken with pineapple in it, but apparently there is a bunch of other stuff that Hawaiians eat. Weird, strange stuff. So I thought I'd post a sample of some of the randomness.

Possibly the most interesting one was the spam sandwich. This is something like a hamburger -- you get a fried slice of spam meat with eggs and other hamburger-esque toppings. The young lady who ordered it assures me it was delicious, and she ordered it again the second time we went, so there must be something to it.

Their "signature dish" is hamburger patties (just the meat!) with fried eggs on top. Sounds healthy, doesn't it? Far too healthy, in fact, which is why they have to add gravy. I don't know, that one might be good, but it's definitely on the unusual side.

They have a whole bunch of variations on the theme of grilled meat, and here I'm on somewhat more familiar ground. You can get barbecue beef ribs, teriyaki chicken, and kalua pig. The kalua pig there is especially good. If you imagine slow-roasted pork, cooked until it is falling apart, and salted enough to give it a flavor (pork, you know), then you're on the right track. Nearly everything is served with rice and macaroni salad.

There are a bunch of other things on the menu (salmon-patty burgers, anyone?) but we haven't tried most of it yet. You could call it a work in progress.

We Offer You Happiness

I get several hundred spam emails a day. Most of these are automatically detected and sorted away to junk mail folders, but occasionally the filters catch a real email, so I give the junk folders an occasional scan to see if I should have caught something. It was on one of those scans that I spotted this subject line:

***JUNK*** We offer you happiness.

The actual email was mostly filled with random garbage text--it would have taken a cryptographer to figure out what they were selling. I think this subject line is intriguing, because it boils down the entire art and science of marketing to its essence: "We offer you happiness." What we deliver is a plastic device that requires batteries, or carbonated sugar water, or a means of accumulating debt quickly--so come and get your happiness!

And on that happy note, dear readers, I pose you this question: Is chocolate ever a bad idea?

"Family" "Home" Evening

The ward has started doing FHE groups, and I figured it was time to give the institution another shot. The last time I went to an FHE group, the group leader solicited suggestions from the group and mine was "keep it short and sweet." One hour and a half later, long after the conversation had devolved into an endless giggle-fest about some pop culture inanity, I excused myself. Unfortunately, that turned out to be typical.

I was hoping that, with the FHE committee rising phoenix-like from the ashes of the semester cycle, it might go better this time. It wasn't a terribly high bar to clear, but the group did admirably. There were announcements, there was singing, there was a short prepared lesson, and there was an acitivity which lasted precisely fifteen minutes (the young lady conducting the event ran a timer!) There was also obligatory candy at the end, which any child will tell you is the essential thing.

All in all, the new incarnation appears to be a success, and I'll try to encourage things by attending. It has long amused me that singles-ward FHEs fail two out of three of their initials, but it still makes for a good evening :-).

By the way, the girl conducting pronounces FHE as "fihee." Yet another acryonym is slyly sneaking its way toward word status!