I have a thing about grease. Yuck! I have never been able to eat greasy foods, and that is rhe first thing I taste when I eat spam. But you will always find several cans of spam in my pantry. Living on the Gulf of Mexico mean you best stay prepared for hurricanes . We've had to deal with electrical outages for up too four weeks at a time. I think everyone around here has one or two BBQ pits, which come in handy after really bad weather. After one such episode, I grilled up a bunch of spam, and found that I rather like it cooked that way. Slowly grilling it lets the extra grease drip off and become crispy. Then we just add sliced onions and cheese on top of bread or crackers. And best of all, little cleaning up afterward.
I don't remember Aten. I do remember Treet, but not well. I'm pretty sure that it had similar purposes, looked pretty much the same, and had similar packaging, but the taste was different.
My experience with Treet, if memory is serving, is that it was lighter in color, not as firm, and a lot more fatty. In fact, I think you could see a lot more splotches of the white fat in it. Now, I may be wrong, but I do think I can still get it in my grocery store... or maybe it's a generic I'm thinking of. Is it still manufactured? And also, has anyone tried the turkey spam? I've seen it but haven't bought spam in a long time now... didn't they have bacon flavored at one time, or still do maybe? I can't even imagine the sodium content on that one, but I'll bet it tasted good!
I remember Spam as a regular quick meal my mom made for us. Fried crispy Spam with mash potatoes or macaroni and cheese and green beans or fried crispy Spam, mash potatoes and creamed peas. Yum, yum, yummy for my tum, tum tummy.
@Joe Riley Nonetheless, Joe, it's true! I had watched city workmen open the manhole in the middle of our intersection, using a long prybar in the "keyhole". There was a manhole in the grass in front of a neighbor's house, and I tested the ideas of raising the cover with a stout broom-stick handle. Seeing it would lift it, I got the neighbor kid to man the broom stick, he got it up just enough for me to stick a thumb in there! Why a thumb, and not all four fingers, I'll never know. Evidently, the clearance around a manhole cover is enough to not crush a 5 year-old thumb bone, but the meat was truly wasted! A scar remains even today below my thumbnail, which occasionally is tender; I think the old Doc should have put in a stitch, but he did not. The event happened in the summer, my birthday being in July, so I started Kindergarten with a healing thumb! Frank
@Ken Anderson Generally you do not seem facetious very often; thinking that, I'll add: "Aten" is the past tense of the verb "To Eat"!
@Mari North Concern about Nitrites being added to lunchmeats may be avoided by looking for the well-sealed sliced meats which are vacuum sealed, and keep for long periods of time, containing no preservatives at all. Check labels closely. How do they keep packaged cooked meat from bacterial contamination? I've heard sealed while still very hot, as well as irradiate it with a hot shot of X-Rays after packaging. I dunno, though.
We lived on Oahu way back in the 60's and my favorite meal was from the 'Silver' truck after a day of surfing near the Ala Wai . Hot dog, slice of SPAM, 2 scoops of rice, mac salad and washed down with a can of Guava juice. Graduated from Radford HS.
Hey Radford Rams! Good t hear from you! I went to Waipahu..."Midst the waving tassels.." Waipahu.Marauders, I always wanted to change our logo to maybe something like... very hard to come up with new name for all the good ones are taken! Aloha! Love Spam too! Look what I found for alums for Radford Rams: https://www.alumniclass.com/radford
In elementary school we would have spam day. All of the kids would feel so sad walking to the lunchroom. I hated spam day. We could smell it all over the school.
What, exactly, is the objection to the smell of good food cooking, especially to a voracious, active k\id? Frank
@Ken Anderson You reminded me of a story about my brother. Not that long ago, he was cleaning out an old shed and he found an unopened can of Spam, circa 1990's. He brought it home and put it in the kitchen, fully expecting everyone to be thrilled by his find of an unopened can of process meat product. I mean, after all, free food, right? My SIL was not of the same mindset, however. I guess she would probably be in the Anti-Spam Club along with your wife. Anyway, she told him that if he didn't throw it away, she would feed it to the cat. Some days later, my brother opened the fridge to find a Tupperware container with some of the Spam in it. He figured she had opened it and given some to the cat. "Well, what she doesn't know won't hurt her," he thought, and he ate the rest of it. Later that evening my SIL came home from work and asked him, "Did you feed the cat the rest of that wet food?"