I have no idea what possessed me. I had not eaten Spam in many years, nor did I intend to. But as I was looking through my kitchen for something to eat, it caught my eye. Maybe it was partially due to a lack of options. For a single guy, I usually maintain a pretty well kept house. Usually. As it happens, my kitchen has been temporarily taken over by power tools, snowmobile parts, and ice fishing equipment, leaving very little room for food. I realized later that the Spam was exactly one year old, as it was given to me on New Year’s Eve of last year as part of a “Y2k Survival Kit”. Anyway, it caught my eye and looked sort of, well, tasty. So I opened it up, removed the mysterious white jelly stuff (more on that later), sliced it up, and threw it in a frying pan along with some eggs. Then I made some toast, threw on a couple slices of pepperjack, fried Spam and eggs, and had myself a breakfast that should have come with a free angioplasty. I feel significantly less healthy now than I did just a few hours ago when I woke up.
That’s my story, but just in case there’s anyone out there fortunate enough never to have heard of Spam, I’ll attempt to explain it to you. Spam is a canned, semi meat-like substance created by the Hormel meat packing company a mere three or four hours down the freeway from me in Austin, Minnesota. It’s generally regarded as marginally edible, and probably best known for being on the business end of Monty Python jokes. According to the Hormel marketing department, Spam is a conglomeration of the words “spicy” and “ham”. My own suspicion is that it was originally an internal corporate acronym for “Scientifically Produced Animal Matter”, but the marketing folks probably decided it best to keep that internal. Every can of Spam, when you open it, has a varying amount of translucent white jelly stuff, which is completely inedible, even on toast. I have never heard of it being positively identified, but based on the fact that popular consensus states that Spam is comprised primarily of pig snouts, logic tells me that the mystery jelly is most likely pig snot. The physical properties of the stuff do nothing to suggest otherwise.
Wow. I can’t believe I ate Spam. Think I’ll post now before I think about it any more.
This kind of thing happens occasionally Lowellster, science does not have an answer, but theories abound. One such theory claims that there is a Vitamin S only found in spam. It aids in the digestion of fat, which makes the kind of breakfast so very yummy. Unfortunately, the more vitamin S you eat, the less effective it is, so keep the spam consumption to a minimum.
Seriously though- I get a craving for oreo cookies every so often. Usually about four is my limit, but once a year or so is not too bad.
Spam!
It’s pink and it’s oval
Spam!
I buy it at the mobil
Spam!
It’s made in Chernobyl
Spam!
When I was a child
My family was so poor!
We didn’t have the finer things in life to eat
But we had a plan
In a big blue can
The government substitute for meat!
Wait a minute. I thought that particular ugly woman was Terry Jones. But I could be wrong.
I’ve never had Spam. I’ve always thought of it as being like deviled ham. I love deviled ham (you know it comes in those little white cans with the devil on it). At least I did. My mother would put it in my lunchbox, on white bread with lots of mustard. Yum.
Is Spam like that? Or is it worse?
The only other thing I know about it is it goes great with poi.
Having had the opportunity to try both SPAM and scrapple, I must agree that scrapple is rejected SPAM. One of the only things I don’t miss about my almost ex-wife is scrapple at her parent’s house on Thanksgiving and Christmas mornings.
SPAM isn’t too bad in my opinion. Of course, I haven’t had any since I was around 18 or so.
Did anyone know that SPAM, cooked properly, is the hottest substance in the Universe? I found this out on a camping trip when I was in high school. Fried up some for breakfast over the fire. Flipped a slice on my brother’s plate. It was a styrofoam plate. Damn SPAM melted right through it. He wound up with a slab of SPAM fused to styrofoam. I waited for my slice to cool enough so it didn’t melt the styrofoam and still got 4th degree burns on the roof of my mouth and tongue.
Vegan? You mean regular spam has some connection to meat?
Simon Hawke had animals called spams in one of his SF series. It was said even the starving hunters never killed them.
Cold Cream - Oil of Porkay.
Oh, and by the way. That clear substance? That’s actually gelatin that separates out from the meat when it cools in the can. It comes from the ground up hooves they put in there.
