Growing up in a Filipino family, I ate a lot of Spam. I would have it fried up with eggs and rice for breakfast, have the leftovers from breakfast in a sandwich for lunch, and if there wasn’t enough for dinner, my mom would round things out with a few more slices of Spam.

I should have been fed more greens (and less processed meat), but my mom — a single woman with three jobs — was just trying to do what she could. And that meant spending as little time as possible in the kitchen.

Lucky for her, I liked the taste of Spam. There was something about its crispy, hammy goodness that made me very happy to eat, especially when doused with ketchup and eaten in small, salty bites with a heaping spoon of steamed white rice.

As I grew older, Spam took a backseat to the more interesting foods I discovered as a teen — sushi, Auntie Anne’s pretzel dogs, Starbucks Frappucinos, Nutella crepes. Even so, it was always there in the background, in Sunday morning breakfasts, as last-minute additions to leftovers on a weeknight.

But I never anticipated how much I’d miss Spam when I went away to college, especially because of these two things: One, I wanted to be a better Muslim. It’s a long story and I won’t get into it, but basically, I had to stop eating pork. Two, I didn’t have a kitchen in my dorm. So even if I caved in to my forbidden desire, I would have to eat Spam in its uncooked, gelatinous form.

I was craving Spam, and I was desperate.

A friend once caught me in the dining hall eating a kosher hot dog with my eyes closed, covered in ketchup on a bed of dry brown rice, pretending it was my dear Spam.

And on one winter break back home, I ate an entire can of Spam in secret and repented to God for three weeks.

Life went by (as did my devotion to Islam), and Spam came in and out of my life. I ate it when I was unemployed, lonely and broke in the big city for a little taste of home.

I used it as a litmus test for boyfriends. If they ate two pieces, they could stick around — any less and I knew things weren’t going to work out.

And I prepared it after a long day at work when I wanted to eat something familiar, just like my mom did.

For health reasons, I don’t eat much Spam these days. But it takes center stage in a recurring food fantasy of mine:

I’m sitting at the head of a very long table, and before me are endless slices of perfectly fried Spam, a mountain of golden fried eggs, a giant pot of steamed rice and a vat of ketchup. I’m happily eating, just as I did as a child, each bite more satisfying than the first.

A version of this essay was published in my magazine, The Runcible Spoon