Mmmm . . . processed gelatinous meat products

[LettersFromTatyana]

Gah! They are everywhere!

If we have to suffer through these bots, we may as well get something out of it, right?


Can anyone claim Spam (the meat product, that is) virginity?

Will anyone admit to being a Spam addict?

What's the weirdest Spam product you've consumed?


Me, I've only consumed Spam twice in my life, both times when my mother tried to recreate some sort of childhood memory of putting up the Christmas tree and eating fried Spam afterwards. My father and I choked it down to avoid one of her patented holiday breakdowns. Loads of fun, that was.

 

[PennLady]

I believe - and this isn't that weird, I don't think -- that when I was younger and my mom made her macaroni salad (yum) she would put spam in it. Probably b/c it was cheaper than ham, which is what she uses now when she makes it.

 

[Stella_Omega]

Paul Theroux said that the Polynesian natives told him you can tell which islands have a cannibal tradition-- they are the ones that love potted meats like spam. The smooth texture and the oiliness, he was told, is reminiscent of human flesh.

Hehe

 

[LettersFromTatyana]

I feel so proud to have you and your Circuit City advertisement here with us, mountnomuscle. You are the first official spam poster in the Spam thread.

 

[PayDay]

I feel so proud to have you and your Circuit City advertisement here with us, mountnomuscle. You are the first official spam poster in the Spam thread.

Ahhh... genuine irony. Good times.

As far as actual meat product spam? Once in a processed chesse dip, it was terribad, and once burnt with mustard and eggs.

As far as spam products? I once bought the Dean Martin Variety Show box set from Gunthy-Renker. That infomercial got me...

 

[damppanties]

The smooth texture and the oiliness, he was told, is reminiscent of human flesh.

 

[SamScribble]

In post-war Britain (I was very young at the time; honestly), Spam fritters were a bit of a delicacy. Happily, I lived on a farm; so they were also a bit of a rarity. But I can remember being 'honoured' with Spam the first time I visited Samoa.

 

[oggbashan]

My local Fish and Chip shop used to cook deep-fried Spam in batter.

They also sold deep-fried Mars Bars in batter.

For one week they did deep-fried Mars Bars wrapped in Spam in batter. They were not a success.

 

[LettersFromTatyana]

For one week they did deep-fried Mars Bars wrapped in Spam in batter. They were not a success.

I really should not have opened this thread first thing in the morning . . . blech!

Still, good to know the Texas state fair doesn't have the monopoly on deep-fried bizarreness.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

I acquired a taste for SPAM in Vietnam. For months we were fed greasy hamburgers, a whole pineapple, and lime Kool Aid....3 times a day. Then they got in a load of chicken, which we ate for months. So we stole C-Rations from the army, and got cases of SPAM from home. SPAM is a favorite now.

 

[Cruel2BKind]

I really should not have opened this thread first thing in the morning . . . blech!

Still, good to know the Texas state fair doesn't have the monopoly on deep-fried bizarreness.

I giggle whenever I see the deep-fried fruit at my own state fair. A running in-joke with my friends is that they are a contradiction on a stick.

Deep fried ice cream still confuses me.

 

[jehoram]

Paul Theroux said that the Polynesian natives told him you can tell which islands have a cannibal tradition-- they are the ones that love potted meats like spam. The smooth texture and the oiliness, he was told, is reminiscent of human flesh.

Hehe

Sorry to burst your bubble, Stella, but that's been debunked. The whole hilarious story may be found at:

http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/1161/whats-really-in-spam

This, by the way, is one of my favorite web sites. The only real danger is that, once you start using the search engine, you can easily waste half a day there.

But what I've been wondering is how much of that Chick-Fil-A chicken and those new Colonel Sanders nugget-like objects are really pink slime? (But I probably don't want to know, actually).

 

[PayDay]

Deep fried ice cream still confuses me.

Agreed.

If it's not melted, or all crispy, how can it be fried? I mean wtf...

 

[LettersFromTatyana]

I giggle whenever I see the deep-fried fruit at my own state fair. A running in-joke with my friends is that they are a contradiction on a stick.

Deep fried ice cream still confuses me.

It confuses me, too. I've never been braved the NC state fair (*shudders*), but maybe one day I will and I'll try it.

Agreed.

If it's not melted, or all crispy, how can it be fried? I mean wtf...

At this random restaurant in Corsica, we had this dessert that was like Crème brûlée, only it was made with ice cream. It was spectacular. I've tried to duplicate it many times at home, but I always end up with melted ice cream and pathetic caramelization.

I've always thought that deep fried ice cream would have to be my substitute.

 

[Stella_Omega]

Sorry to burst your bubble, Stella, but that's been debunked. The whole hilarious story may be found at:

http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/1161/whats-really-in-spam

Nope, my story is still true- Paul Theroux really did say this.



Snopes.com is one of those infinitely useful things, like Duct tape, pipe cleaners and google.

 

[PayDay]

At this random restaurant in Corsica, we had this dessert that was like Crème brûlée, only it was made with ice cream. It was spectacular. I've tried to duplicate it many times at home, but I always end up with melted ice cream and pathetic caramelization.

I've always thought that deep fried ice cream would have to be my substitute.

Awesome, now I'm hungry.

 

[jehoram]

Nope, my story is still true- Paul Theroux really did say this.



Snopes.com is one of those infinitely useful things, like Duct tape, pipe cleaners and google.

Well, not exactly...

What you said earlier was:

Paul Theroux said that the Polynesian natives told him you can tell which islands have a cannibal tradition-- they are the ones that love potted meats like spam. The smooth texture and the oiliness, he was told, is reminiscent of human flesh.

What he actually said inThe Happy Isles of Oceania, as quoted by Cecil Adams, was:

It was a theory of mine that former cannibals of Oceania now feasted on Spam because Spam came the nearest to approximating the porky taste of human flesh. ‘Long pig’ as they called a cooked human being in much of Melanesia. It was a fact that the people-eaters of the Pacific had all evolved, or perhaps degenerated, into Spam-eaters. And in the absence of Spam they settled for corned beef, which also had a corpsy flavor.

Please not the subtle distinction; Theroux doesn't claim to have been told anything by anybody; he seems to be saying that he came to this theory on his own. And Theroux himself confesses directly to Cecil that he'd been joking:

Cecil, my man!

You were right the first time. Yes, it is a joke. In spite of my solemn declaration in The Happy Isles of Oceania, the voracious Spam consumption in the Pacific is not conclusive evidence of a cannibal past.

And I enjoyed seeing my laborious joke cleverly adumbrated in yet another of your witty, wide-ranging, and inexhaustibly erudite columns.

But also, speaking as a vegetarian, all meat-eating looks to me like the first step down the road to anthropophagy.

With good wishes, Paul Theroux

Of course, you may have been using a quote from another Theroux source that neither I nor Cecil had come across. I went to Snopes, but found only one reference to Theroux, and that didn't have anything to do with Spam.

So can we agree that while Theroux said it, he wasn't told it, and he didn't mean it?

Yours for precision in quotation,

Jehoram the spoilsport

 

[Stella_Omega]

I concede.

I was quoting from memory, because I've actually read the book. I will point out that I never made any conjecture as to whether or not he believed what he was saying.

 

[WaywardandLost]

In Hawaii, Burger King began serving Spam in 2007 on its menu to compete with the local McDonald's chains. In Hawaii, Spam is so popular it is sometimes referred to as "The Hawaiian Steak".One popular Spam dish in Hawaii is Spam musubi, where cooked Spam is combined with rice and nori seaweed and classified as onigiri.

 

[R. Richard]

Agreed.

If it's not melted, or all crispy, how can it be fried? I mean wtf...

Okay, it's not deep fried. However, baked Alaska is a dessert made of ice cream placed in a pie dish lined with slices of sponge cake or Christmas pudding and topped with meringue. The entire dessert is then placed in an extremely hot oven for a brief time, long enough to firm the meringue. The meringue is an effective insulator, and the short cooking time prevents the heat from getting through to the ice cream.

The name 'Baked Alaska' was coined at Delmonico's Restaurant by their chef-de-cuisine Charles Ranhofer in 1876 to honor the recently acquired American territory.

February 1 is Baked Alaska Day in the United States!

 

[SydneyBlake]

Gah! They are everywhere!

If we have to suffer through these bots, we may as well get something out of it, right?


Can anyone claim Spam (the meat product, that is) virginity?

Will anyone admit to being a Spam addict?

What's the weirdest Spam product you've consumed?


Me, I've only consumed Spam twice in my life, both times when my mother tried to recreate some sort of childhood memory of putting up the Christmas tree and eating fried Spam afterwards. My father and I choked it down to avoid one of her patented holiday breakdowns. Loads of fun, that was.

I thought perhaps you'd delivered and were complaining about the hospital food.

 

[damppanties]

Can anyone claim Spam (the meat product, that is) virginity?

Yes.

 

[LettersFromTatyana]

Yes.

And so it is resolved, on this eleventh day of August in the year two thousand twelve, that in the event of a cannibalistic attack on the AH, damppanties shall be regarded as the least likely suspect.

 

[AirRichard101]

Can anyone claim Spam (the meat product, that is) virginity?

Nope. I was in the Army. They serve lots of things made with processed gelatinous meat products.

 

[desertslave]

My mom tried to feed it to me, once, when I was five or six. I saw the can, I saw the stuff on my plate, and just couldn't parse it into something edible.

Flash forward six or seven years, and our troop leader in Girl Scouts conjured up an amazing breakfast consisting of leftover baked potaoes, scrambled eggs, chopped Spam, and melted cheese. It was stupidly good, and only the person who chopped the Spam up knew what had happened. After that I had to concede that it wasn't horrible after all.

Then again, I grew up in the land of scrapple, corn mush, and Pork Roll, so what do I know?