It's Time To Talk About Spam

Across the Fence #524

No, I’m not talking about those irritating messages that fill up your e-mail inbox every morning. If you have e-mail I imagine you’re as sick of Spam mail as I am. So we won’t talk about Spam. Let’s talk about the “real” Spam instead.

Now that Thanksgiving is behind us, and many people are still as stuffed as the turkey, it’s probably not the best time to talk about food. I’m not talking about just any old food, I’m talking about Spam… that mysterious meat that comes in a tin and is the staple of every household’s menu. OK, it’s safe to say it wouldn’t be found on the pantry shelf of everyone who reads Across the Fence.

Lets see a show of hands. How many of you know what Spam is? How many of you have eaten it? How many of you can honestly say you like it? Just so you know, my hand was raised for all three questions.

For those of you who have led a sheltered life and not been exposed to Spam, let me give you a brief history so you won’t be in the dark when it comes to this icon of a product. Spam is a pre-cooked meat product made by Hormel Foods Corporation, headquartered in Austin, Minnesota (also known as “Spam Town USA”). It was first introduced in 1937.

The ingredients in the classic Spam product are chopped pork shoulder meat, with ham meat added. There’s also salt, water, modified potato starch for a binder, sugar, and sodium nitrite as a preservative. That gelatinous glaze you see when you open a tin of Spam, forms when the meat stock is cooled. It has a pink color that turns to brownish-red when fried.

I remember eating Spam quite often when I was young. It was just another type of meat and I never gave it a second thought. It didn’t look that appetizing when it came out of the tin, but after Ma sliced it up and cooked it in a frying pan, I liked it and still do. I think the main reason we often had Spam was because of its affordability. Spam was often stigmatized as “poor people’s food.” Because of that, many people wouldn’t buy it because they didn’t want to be perceived as poor. I have no problem putting it in our shopping cart. It was good enough for our family when I was young and it’s still good enough for me now.

Spam became popular during World War II because fresh meat was hard to get to the soldiers on the front lines. Spam didn’t spoil in the heat and it was easier to get the tins delivered to remote areas than perishable items. Soldiers often had Spam for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Some soldiers referred to Spam as “ham that didn’t pass the physical,” and “meatloaf without basic training.” They referred to Spam as “Special Army Meat.” That’s like we later called dried beef on toast, SOS, “S--- On Shingle” when I was in the army. SOS must have replaced Spam in the Army diet.

We could have used some care packages of Spam in Vietnam. When we were out on long operations, our diet consisted of C-rations and anything else we could scrounge up to eat. Sometimes we combined several C-rations and dumped the contents of each can in a steel pot (helmet). We’d cut up vegetables borrowed from Montegnard gardens we found in the remote countryside. We mixed the whole concoction together and placed the helmet over a heat source to warm it up. Sometimes we used C-4 explosives. Our demolition guys knew how much to use without blowing up our food. Then we all dipped our empty C-ration cans into the wonderful conglomeration and had a hot meal while sitting out in the boonies. If only we’d had some Spam to slice and dice and add to the mix, what a glorious meal we could have enjoyed.

Cooking up a meal in a steel pot. May, 1967

I still like it. I like it fried, but you can microwave it too if you’re in a hurry. You can have Spam and eggs or a Spam sandwich. Put a couple slices in a bun or sandwich, add some catsup, and enjoy your meal. You can also slice and dice it, brown it up and throw it in with some beans or rice. You can even make a Spam taco or sub sandwich. My mouth starts to water just thinking about all the possibilities.

Spam is more than just another form of meat. It’s become part of many jokes and urban legends, and become a part of pop culture and folklore. And of course the name “Spam” was given to unwanted e-mail. That’s what most people think of now when they hear the word. How many other foods have their own museum? You can visit the Spam Museum next time you’re in Austin, Minnesota. If you’re in Waikiki, Hawaii the last weekend in April you can attend the Spam Jam. There’s the annual Spam Parade and Festival in Shady Cove, Oregon, and the yearly Spamarama Festival in Austin, Texas. There are also numerous Spam cook-offs around the world. Maybe we need a Spam-cook-off along with our Chili cook-offs.

Think of all the possibilities that Spam presents. I better alert the grocery stores. There may be a run on Spam products in the coming weeks!


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