I came home to an empty refrigerator. But never fear, the Ghetto Gourmet is here.

I have a pyrex thing, kind of like a two inch deep glass pie plate, given to me by someone who does not want me ingesting any more estrogen mimicking chemicals from heating plastic plates. I clean this thing once a week, which gives some continuity to the flavor of my food, making Friday's supper kind of a medley of the week's menu—the dietary week in review you might say.

I do not buy bread as it gets smashed in my backpack, and making bread with this coffee pot and microwave has so far not worked out. As my only food stuffs were canned stews and soups left over from Mister Mike's last March clearance sale, and I'm a bread sopping kind of guy, I hit on a compromise. Instead of a 24 ounce can of Dinty Moore stew without bread to mop up the valuable micro-nutrients in the gravy before it solidifies back to its original solid state, I made a pot pie.

Ascend the carven stair.

Behold the realm of Anu and Ishtar.

Look beneath the corner stone.

Unlock the sacred box.

Gaze upon the tablets carved by that unpaid slave who got chucked in the irrigation canal after he...

Listen to the epic of Whitetrashgmish, of how he experienced all, suffered all, conquered—well, his dietary needs at least...

Okay, it's just a room with books laying all over the place and thoughtfully covered with clean clothes—well, really I pile the clothes on the books because the books are in front of the dresser.

Yes, the pot pie.

Smash 4 stale, generic taco shells into a fine aggregate and spread evenly on the bottom of the glass plate-bowl-thing with the proprietary name that is not in the Word 2007 dictionary.

Open the can of stew with the tab facing away and the can mouthing open towards you, because it is going to be easier to wash that shirt than it is going to be for me to wash that damned curtain with the girly weave that Tannika bought me.

Pour the stew out in the middle of the bowl-thing and try not to be discouraged by the plopping dog food sound, because it's going to taste pretty good.

The stew is really thick, so won't spread out and cover all the taco shells. If you try to spread it with your only spoon, then you will have to use another napkin, and they cost. So, to save your last plastic spoon from getting coated with cold grease, find the coffee filter on the old lady's dresser that used to live in this room an examine the contents. In this case I found six Taco Bell salsa packets and dripped them over the exposed taco shell crumbs around the congealed stew perimeter. But duck sauce, soy sauce, ketchup, mayo, will all do fine. It's about the moisture, about turning that lime treated cornmeal into mushy crust—and it worked.

I placed a paper plate over the top of the glass pie bucket and nuked it on dinner plate three times, hitting the beverage setting once for good measure, and "Bam!"