Thursday, July 5, 2012

THE ORIGINAL SPAM

Long before electronic spam . . .

. . . long before Monty Python's spam . . .




. . . long before Spamarama,

    . . . long before Spamalot,

there was simply Spam, a spiced meat product invented by the Hormel company in Austin, Minnesota. 


It is a canned precooked meat product.  The name Spam came from a combination of the words "spiced" and "ham".  As of 2007, seven billion cans of Spam have been sold.  3.8 cans are consumed every second in the United States.  You can read a lot more about Spam here.

It is actually quite fascinating, including the surprising information that Spam is sold in many varieties of flavors . . like Spam Hot and Spicy, with Tabasco flavor added; Spam Oven Roasted Turkey; Spam with Bacon; Spam Garlic; and many others.

Spam is on the menu at McDonald's restaurants in Guam, Hawaii and Saipan, and on Burger King menus in Hawaii.  In fact, it is so popular in Hawaii it is sometimes referred to as The Hawaiian Steak.

All of which is to tell you that . . . wait for it . . . I like Spam.  SWMBO and, I'm sure, a lot of other people think I'm nuts.  She can't even stand the smell of it.  But I like it.



Take a big hamburger bun, slather some mayonaisse on the bottom half, some margarine on the top and insert a couple of slices of Spam.


Top the Spam with a slice of American cheese.


Top it with the other half of the bun, add some potato chips and . . voila!  A sandwich fit for a king.

Or a Viking.  (see previous Monty Python video)

10 comments:

  1. I like spam if it's fried nice and crispy. My uncle used to eat the stuff raw, and he wouldn't even scrape that gooey junk off of it.

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  2. It's not raw . . it's precooked. And that gooey junk is "aspic", which fancy chefs used to create.

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  3. Great post. I'm another spam fan.

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  4. Spam fritters! Used to be one of our school dinners. I've not seen it for years, but I'd give it a go again. My mum was always a bit snobby about it, and preferred to buy me 'luncheon meat' which was a bit like your bologne(?) I think. Here you get garlic sausage and other stuff. Funny how offal and processed meat products have always become by-words for junk of various kinds - tripe, sweet-Fanny-Adams (look that one up for a wacky story!), ballony, spam...

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  5. I'm with you pal! Lana can't stand the sight of it, but I have loved it since I was in college and found it was a
    great meal. Your reply to Stephen is beautiful--it need not be cooked. My brother John found that grilling it in the skillet with a little 7 up really gave it a nice glaze!

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  6. Love it, love it, love it!!! They also sell it in single slice packs which is great for sandwiches.

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  7. SPAM is like liverwurst to me. Delish.

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  8. Funny to see how many people after all love it... the same will be said about McDo in years from now...

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  9. Ah, pics of food, my weakness. Not the pic silly the FOOD. I really need to go get a watermelon tomorrow......

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  10. I love spam! Although we buy turkey spam now - it's gotta be healthier, right?

    My mom used to make a spam dish with pork n beans & cornbread - delicious!

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