And I mean the "meat" kind, not the e-mail kind.
People in Hawaii have the idea that no one else in the world ever ate Spam, but I grew up with it on the East Coast. One of my favorite meals as a child, derived from a school cafeteria lunch, was green beans (probably canned), potatoes, a little onion, and cubes of Spam, cooked up as a stew. It was yummy. My druid-ish mother-in-law was known to make Spam roasts, studded with cloves and garnished with pineapple. And in Hawaii, Spam musubi is a very popular snack. I have been known to indulge.
Now there are flavors of Spam (one of the best inspired by a cargo-cultish recipe from Guam), and today I raided our "disaster shelf" (where there are cans of Spam and tuna, just in case of tsunami, hurricane or nuclear disaster) where a can of "bacon-flavored" Spam was lurking. (Bacon flavor? What a surprise.) I've been having all these lunches out with friends since I came back from China, and haven't really shopped. (Not that I ever do. The Wizard is better at grocery shopping.) Home alone today, I popped a few slices of the specialty Spam on the griddle, then a egg corralled in the browned slices, and enjoyed a kind of BLT in a flour tortilla (that's a wrap) with tomato, lettuce, alfalfa sprouts and real mayo and a grinding of black pepper. Yum-me.
From the Wikipedia reference, I note that:
In China, Spam is an increasingly popular food item, and often used in sandwiches. Hormel has had a joint-venture in Shanghai for 16 years which has been highly successful in promoting Spam. In 2005, the Chinese division of Spam was one of the most profitable parts of the Hormel company. This development is due, in part, to the increasing per capita income in Shanghai, coupled with the expansion of their food diet towards more meat.
Yeah, Spam is made from what?... pig noses and toeses? But if you eat meat, and I do, what's the difference between a processed snout and a BBQ rib?
5 comments:
Aaaaarrrrgh!
Spam??? Actually Spam is not half bad, compared to that other post-war staple: Corned Beef, in little tins from Argentina. Now that was gross.
Childhood nightmares are recalled at the mention of this stuff.
Maybe I should give these things another chance?
It amazes me, often, how things I really, really hated as a child, taste so much better now, in my advanced state of decrepitude.
Some things, of course, never taste good, no matter how old one gets:
Bacon. Brussels Sprouts. Butter Beans. Hot Milk Skin...
Truly Ugh!
Wartime, cargo cult food...tinned corned beef is also big in Hawaii...fried up with lots of cabbage and onion, seasoned with tabasco and shoyu, served with rice. Actually, not half bad. Try it!
And a proper lavish BLT is pretty good, I think. And young brussels sprouts I really like, with butter and salt and pepper.
But I agree with you on the butter beans...and lima beans, all those broad mealy beans.
I would never make a steady diet of spam, but once in a while...
But hot milk skin? Were you supposed to eat it? That is yucky.
Nice to hear from you!
Gross. But then again I'm 98 percent vegetarian.
The problem I have with Spam is less to do with the source of the meat (what part of the animal it came from, or the factory farmed conditions it was produced in) and more to do with the added preservatives, specifically the sodium nitrates, which are known to be cancer causing, as well as the excessive salt content (which is found in most canned meats, sausages and processed lunch meats). A diet high in both of those things is linked to stomach and colon cancer. They're just overall really bad for your health, overtaxes your organs.
So you like the taste of it. That's fine. But there are legitimate factors that make it unhealthy irrespective of it being meat. There are healthier forms of meat. From a purely nutritional standpoint, canned meats are the absolute worst.
Sorry don't mean to sound like a food Nazi. Just sharing the information in case you weren't aware of it. Though you probably already were, right?
In any case, moderation is the key. A little bit of Spam probably won't kill you, but if you eat it all the time, well then that may be another story.
Well, like I said, it's from the disaster/emergency shelf.
Moderation indeed is the key.
Everything in moderation...
Having said that: I love spam (with instant noodles -- to compound things - or macaroni and fried egg). Also love Brussel sprouts (au gratin or just plain boiled), bacon and hot milk skin (yuum!).
Butter beans though -- eeeeh... hehe! :)
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