Day: September 16, 2006

I had more than a few comments and Emails about Spam® after I posted on Korean Hometown Restaurant, several of them including one comment from Emily, who authors the wonderful What’s For Lunch Food Blog, asked about the Spam® – Hawaii connection. Now I’m not a Food Anthropologist, but I remember a few things about Spam.

Food Anthropologist Rachel Lauden in Her entertaining book The Food of Paradise writes a bit about the history of  Spam® in Hawaii, but more about the perception, attitudes, and different Spam preparations. What little I do know is; in the 1930’s Hormel SPiced hAM, became Spam®. The SPiced hAM product itself was first developed as way to market the left over pork shoulder from canned Ham production. So the name Spam®, was basically a marketing tool. The Hawaii history is based around one major event in History, World War II. Because Spam(and other canned meats like Vienna Sausage) requires no refrigeration, it was portable and convenient food for the U.S. Military, who introduced it to Hawaii, and other areas in the world(i.e. Korea). And so Spam® became the equal opportunity food of Hawaii, crossing racial and economic boundaries. After all it’s not bland, it’s not tough, it’s flexible(check out Hawaii’s Spam Cookbook) and it goes great with rice! Spam® consumption in Hawaii is somewhere around 4 million cans a year………

Here are a few entertaining links that delve farther "into" Spam® than I ever could :

History of Spam

Spam Links(no pun intended)

The Amazing and Fabulous Spam Site

Wikpedia – Spam

And one fun book, Spam: A Biography.

Here’s something I made recently that I enjoyed. Guess what it is?

What happened was the Missus cut the rounded ends off a block of  Spam®, so I was left with a square block. So I cut a few pieces off, and made Spam® Katsu. But I wasn’t finished, I also fried an egg, and warmed up some Japanese Curry, and made me some Spam® Katsu Curry:

It was quite good. We found that breading the Spam®, cut down on the salty flavor. I’ll make this again, as soon as my arteries recover………

Which just goes to show…..Spam® is supposed to be eaten.