Maybe I’ll change my name to Siam Spam.
I once had a coworker who was raised in Hawaii and I asked her if Spam was as popular there as I’d heard. Most emphatically she said it was.
Just last week, on “Delicious Destinations”, with Andrew Zimmern, the show was in Hawaii and they really did feature places that had Spam dishes.
Spam! I like Spam. The supermarket nearest me carries the widest range of Spam varieties of any supermarket I’ve ever been in. My personal favorite is the Spam with bacon, closely followed by the hickory smoked and the classic Spam.
The “healthy” varieties (Lite, low sodium and turkey) are edible but not enticing. Spam with garlic is OK if you like garlic. Teriyaki Spam I found to border on disgusting, would not eat again. Spam with Cheese was OK but added more grease than cheese flavor, IMHO.
Haven’t tried chorizo, hot & spicy or Spam with jalapenos, since I’m on Team “Pain is Not a Flavor” when it comes to spicy food.
The wife yesterday sliced up and fried up some jalapeno Spam. We put it in soft taco shells with mushrooms. Our nod Cinco de Mayo the day before.
Last time I visited Hawaii was 18 years ago, and I clearly remember enjoying “Hawaiian Breakfast” at McDonald’s: rice, sausage, egg and fried Spam 
It’s that time of year again. The wife and I just returned from the 2018 Waikiki Spam Jam. Excellent, I think even bigger than last year. Among the other Spam delectibles samples was Spam cheesecake. Really. Well, Spam and haupia cheesecake. It was very good.
Do any of the vendors at the Spam Jam offer it Mainland-Fair-Food-style (that is, impaled on a stick, dredged through funnel cake batter, and deep-fried)?
If we weren’t having a Japanese dinner tonight, I’d make my husband’s favorite Spam fried rice for breakfast:
Rice fried with finely cubed-up Spam, egg, green onion, and mushrooms. Seasoned with a few dashes of soy sauce, hon dashi powdered soup stock, and a bit of sesame oil.
Sort of. One stand handed out free samples of “Spam fries,” which is just a slice of Spam deep fried in a batter. Just one fry per sample though, so the wife and I went through the line four times each. And lots of local restaurants had stands offering fare with Spam in it – Spam on pizza, Mexican food, Italian food etc.
And a $5 donation to the Hawaiian Food Bank netted us a 4.5-ounce can of Spam-flavored macadamia nuts. It just doesn’t get more Hawaiian than that.
Here in Hawaii the main emergency provisions are water, rice, Spam and toilet paper, in that order. Drink, eat and wipe, all you need in paradise!
I once stayed in Las Vegas with my girlfriend and parents for a week and our complimentary meals included steak and seafood for our asking every night. When we got home, we all agreed that we needed a change of pace and fried up Spam and ate it with rice.
I recently learned that Spam is also loved in Korea. Makes sense because of the U.S. military presence during the Korean War and currently.
I saw a show where a celebrity moved into her new condo and she happily served up slices of Spam to her celebrity guests. I get a chuckle when Kpop stars order delivery raemyun (ramen) and excitedly order extra Spam!
The next time you visit, “brok da mout” (eat something delicious) and get the Local Deluxe Breakfast which adds Portuguese sausage (linguisa) to the meal. :eek:
Portuguese sausage is great!
Try the low sodium version. And/or make Spam Egg salad–diced spam, chopped hard-boiled eggs, mayo, a dash of yellow mustard, celery, & relish if you like it. Divine!!
Have you tried the Portuguese sausage flavored SPAM? I think it’s unique to the Hawaii market.
OMG, I felt so bad when I fried up a few slices and had to toss the rest in the trash. Yes, I know…wasting SPAM is the 8th Deadly Sin in Hawaii!:eek:
I like hard fried spam cut up into a bowl of butter beans and rice with raw onions.
Yes, love it. We keep a stock of most of the Spam flavors, everything except Lite and Low Sodium.
Why did you have to throw some out? Were you on your way to the airport for a month out of town?
(also I think it’s still Seventh. To the best of my knowledge, they don’t count gluttony)
Hey, no love for Weird Al?
The key is going to open the tin,
the tin is there to keep the spam in
my military ww2-vietnam era relatives hated spam …one uncle used to get sick just smelling it…
grandma used to eating it loved it because it was a easy cheap way to feed the 6-9 grandchildren lunch that moved in and out…
although once because we found one of the old ration cookbooks we had the mock ham dinner …which was a large piece of spam dressed up as a holiday dinner …wasn’t that bad…the glaze helped …
The subject of Spam came up one day with a colleague I had in Moscow back in the '90s. He told me his father, a member of the WWII generation, absolutely loved the stuff. I said he was probably introduced to it by the tons that were sent to the USSR under Lend-Lease. I suspect there are still warehouses full of it in Murmansk.
Russians have their own version of Spam, BTW. It’s called tushenka, derived from the way it’s cooked. Tastes exactly the same.