I thought I’d have some fun today. With both my palate and my perceptions. Could I create something from nothing? Well what I mean to say is could I create something from a lot less than nothing? Could I make something creative and delicious using SPAM?

Sesame Marinated SPAM Sliders with Quail Egg and Gingered Mayonnaise

It's easy to snub SPAM, but why would you after tasting these little sliders. Marinated in a spicy blend of sesame, soy and chilis, you might be reminded of the Hawaiian snack food masubi. But these little sandwiches are topped with a warm, oozing quail egg and a dollop of gingered mayonnaise– making them something else altogether.

SPAM is not something I buy everyday. Well in fact this is the first time I ever bought SPAM. Not that I haven’t eaten SPAM before. I have eaten and I recall liking it. Of course that may have been 30 or more years ago.

Well as soon as I had that block shaped blue can in my hands some repressed SPAM memories came flooding back. SPAM chunks in mac-n-cheese. That’s what I immediately thought of. Obviously I was served SPAM and blue box macaroni as a child.

But it was the sound that surprised me the most, ker-lunk-click. That’s the sound the top makes when you use your thumb and forefinger and pry open the special pull-tab top that defines SPAM packaging. The sound was one thing– metallic and false. I began to feel like I was making a mistake because the next sensory perception was aroma. I was beginning to worry that my experiment into SPAM would end badly.

Carrots are a year 'round item at the Hollywood Farmers Market. But this time of year particularly beautiful carrots can be found in an array of colors, sizes and shapes. I love the little round French carrots; so sweet and carroty. They are the perfect size to pop in your mouth like a little carrot bon-bon, and that’s exactly what I do with them.

So this week I chose carrots for my Market Matters post. Not just any carrot however, I chose a variety of the most unusually colored carrots I could find. Because once you get out of the PigglyWiggly you will discover that there is way more to a carrot than orange. There are red carrots, purple ones, even yellow, white, and two-toned varieties.

You needn’t be frightened of these carrots. They are not some mutinized hybrid with a lot of genetic hanky-panky going on. Nope, most of these carrots are heirlooms.

If there is one thing that is universally true, it's this: Sons are always trying to be half the man their old man was. Sometimes that formula gets tragically warped and a son spends his life trying to be twice the man his father was.

But this is really two sides of the same coin.

In my case I will have to settle for half the man.

Because my father is a doctor, and not just a doctor, but a children's heart doctor. And as if that is not enough he also volunteers his time at his local Free Clinic caring for the many of us who have fallen between life's ever widening cracks. He has even traveled to 3rd world countries where he meets and diagnoses kids with heart defects. Heart defects that would have otherwise gone on undetected and untreated.

People like my father with outsized talents (and undersized egos) are a rare breed. Sometimes being the son of a man like this is a little like climbing a ladder with uneven rungs. It's hard to know how much progress you are making, and if it's even worth the effort. But I guess that is part of being a son; to always wonder.