WARNING: SPAM!

From what I understand SPAM is very popular in Hawaii. With all this talk of SPAM. SPAM. SPAM on the board I though I would share this with you all. So put this one in your tiki mug and toss it back:

Hee Nalu Soup

• 2 can Tomato, chopped
• 2 can Kidney Bean w/juice
• 2 can Spam what am...
• 1-2 big round onion, sliced an or chopped
• 2 stalk celery, sliced
• 1-2 carrot an 1-2 potato, chopped
• 1 Tbsp Hawaiian salt [pa1akai]
• Hawaiian chilli peppa water, [up to you]
• 1 can black, bite like hell, Nanaikapono ants. [optional]

Take one big pot an do da following: Try cut da Spam da carrots an da potatos into da kine cube an into da pot. Slice da onion and fry da buggah in oil or butter until brown. Add da tomatos ana beans to da pot an water for cover em. Brin to da boil and simmer dat sucker until da veggies stay tender. Have dis ono soup with lillibit white sticky rice & 2 day sour poi an one Diamond Head orange soda. SOME GOOD...

http://www.hawaiian-music.com/recipes/heenalusoup.html

Hey,
Thanks for the post. I read some time ago on the web that either Burger King or MacDonald's was test marketing sales of that wonderful Spam in Honolulu due to it's being so popular there.

I've got a SPAM recipe from some English friends. It's pretty simple but very tasty.

Spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam and spam.

you can also add eggs.

Thank U, Drive Thru

Stop me if I posted this before...I recently did this Tiki party for one of my sisters' 3oth. I wanted the food to have a Hawaiian angle to it so I included SPAM on the menu in the form of SPAM, pineapple, and red onion skewers. Another sister and her friends were cooking them, when they uncovered the plate the all went "SPAM?" But when the brief grilling was done they were all impressed and the SPAM skewers were the first food gone. The high saltiness of the SPAM goes great with the pineapple and the onion rounds it all out. Plus the shock factor when serving your guests SPAM is an added bonus.

Aloha Local Boyz & Girlz from da mainland!

SPAM.... betta den pig betta den poi!! I love grind on spam! If I'm in a hurry fo get to work...ok I lie, local people NEVA in a hurry fo work! I stop by Mikey D's fo da spam, egg and 2 scoops of sticky rice breakfast. You guys got some good stuff on da mainland But cha can't get that on da mainland brahda! Mahaloz Plenny fo da guy or wahine that invented spam!

Shaka!

P.S.

(P.S. in Filipino means Porget Someting)hehe
anyways, you gotta try Spamaroni & Cheese!

fry spam cubes brown then add it to a box of macaroni & cheese ewww one of my favorite Grinds! spam fried rice too.

hey gecko,

don't know a recipe for spam musubi do you?

SPAM MUSUBI

5 cups Cal-Rose short grain type rice
12 oz can Spam
1/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup soy sauce
1 garlic clove, mashed
Furikake nori
6 sheets musubi nori

Cook rice and allow to steam, then cool. Cut Spam into 12 slices,
1/4 inch thick. Cook in mixture of sugar, soy sauce and garlic.
Set aside. Cut nori in half width-wise (so you get a wide piece
versus a thin, narrow piece). Set aside.

Using a spam musubi press, place a piece of nori on a plate.
Position musubi press on top so the length of the press is in the
middle of the nori (width-wise). The press and the width of the
nori should fit exactly the length of a slice of Spam! Add rice
so it fills half of the press. Press down with the flat part of
the press to compact the rice. Sprinkle furikake nori then add a
piece of Spam. Cover with more rice. Compact the rice again.
Remove from the press by pushing the whole stack down while lifting
off the press. Then fold nori over.

You can also add a thin slice of egg omelet in the center or little
bits of pickled ginger. Can also be made with teriyaki chicken if
you're not a Spam lover.

excellent! mahalo!

The following is taken from 'The Straight Dope':

"Regarding Spam, is it true, as travel writer Paul Theroux claims, that the people of the South Pacific love their Spam because it tastes so much like . . . people? --Mary E. Sage, via the Internet

Cecil replies:

Marketing Spam must present some unique challenges. Imagine the conversation in the boardroom:

Spam product manager #1: I've got some good news and some bad news. The good news is that Spam is hugely popular among the people of the South Pacific. The bad news is that, according to the famous travel writer Paul Theroux, the islanders dig it because they're ex-cannibals and they think Spam tastes like human flesh.

Spam product manager #2: Hmm. Is this a problem . . . or an opportunity?

Let's start with the facts, then segue to the rumors. Spam is one of the favorite foods of Pacific islanders, including Hawaiians, who consume it in vast quantities and consider it a delicacy. This offends the upper-middle-class sensibilities of some writers, who consider Spam emblematic of all that is vile about western culture. For example, in The Island of the Colorblind, Oliver Sacks writes about the fare served during his visit to the island of Pingelap:

We were all revolted by the Spam which appeared with each meal--invariably fried; why, I wondered, should Pingelapese eat this filthy stuff when their own basic diet was both healthy and delicious? ... How was it that not only the Pingelapese, but all the peoples of the Pacific, seemingly, could fall so helplessly, so voraciously, on this stuff, despite its intolerable cost to their budgets and their health? I was not the first to puzzle about this; later, when I came to read Paul Theroux's book The Happy Isles of Oceania, I found his hypothesis about this universal Spam mania.

Theroux writes:

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.

Nowhere does Sacks say he actually believes Theroux's theory, and it seems clear enough that the often peevish Theroux is exercising his tongue-in-cheek . . . uh, perhaps not the best choice of words. His ironic sense of humor. So far I haven't been able to get him on the phone to confirm this, but what's he going to say?

Yes, it was a joke.
No, it wasn't a joke. I have personal knowledge that human flesh tastes like pork and corned beef.
Still, these things have a way of taking on a life of their own. Lest our great-grandchildren find this wacky story circulating on the Intergalactinet in the year 2098, let it be known that:

There is no correlation between alleged prior cannibalism and love of Spam. As Sacks notes, the Spam-craving Pingelapese had no tradition of cannibalism. More important, Hawaii, epicenter of Pacific rim Spamophilism, has been more or less cannibal-free since the arrival of Christianity in the early 19th century.
The popularity of Spam among Pacific islanders can be readily explained by the scarcity and expense of other types of meat and the lack or unreliability of refrigeration. Fresh meat is stored primarily in a self-propelled biounit known as a pig, which is only slaughtered for major occasions. If you're looking for a spicy bit to have with your breadfruit you can't beat the convenience of Spam.
Still, let's concede one point to Theroux. Does Spam taste corpsy? Of course it tastes corpsy--it's meat. We're just arguing about the identity of the deceased.

TOLDJA

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"

Trader Woody

It's not just popular in the Pacific islands, either. In Korea, Spam is considered a great delicacy, and even comes in gift boxes. The market is so hot for Spam there that there is a fake spam product produced in Korea, called Lo-Spam. Imagine a fake version of a fake meat product. MMMMMM....

On 2002-09-02 08:01, tiki.head wrote:
Imagine a fake version of a fake meat product. MMMMMM....

SPAM isn't fake meat - it's just not what a lot of folks think of as prime cut.

HEY Atomic,
Any more spam or spam like threads from you and it's into the spam can with you.
Careful not to get cut.

PS. could you open that can-o spam and see if my dads in there, I'm looking for my dad, has anyone one seen my dad?

In Canada, we are also such a sad country that we have two of our own fake Spam brands, one called KAM, and one called KLIK.

Perhaps I should start exporting these to Polynesia in return for shiny shiny trinkets?

Humans taste like Spam? I was thinking it was more like chicken.

C'mon you guys! Give Spam a break! First off..there should be nothing about Spam to offend our Western sensibilities...it was generated as a way to utilize tons of pork shoulder..not a fake meat...and in vainglorious Western Capitalist fashion, tons of money was made on this stuff...so on that level, very appealing to the West...also, this stuff saved possibly millions of lives during World War II and the Korean War...this explains the fondness of it by many countries, especially islands like the UK and Hawaii. Living in Hawaii is an expensive proposition...hell, I'd pay five dollars for a loaf of bread, and six dollars for a box of cereal...so Spam ships over quite nicely, is not perishable in it's can...and economically is an acquired taste...I eat it once every couple of years...Hey, I for one am proud of this little piece of American...it's a war hero..and I'd rather eat this than fruitcake...Hell, we could have invented Vegemite!...think about that! :lol: Grey

In Canada, we are also such a sad country that we have two of our own fake Spam brands, one called KAM, and one called KLIK.

Yes, I've seen KAM but nothing beats the great taste of SPAM. I was raised on the stuff...

**Poly-Pop ***

Bartender, make mine a glass of WATAHHH!!!!!

[ Edited by: PolynesianPop 2013-02-04 20:28 ]

On the Discovery Channel I saw a Hidden Hawaii show that talked about all the odd things tourists would not get to see on Hawaii. One of their features was a SPAM reserve, secretly located on one of the Islands, the locals don' t even know where it is.

Just had some Spam sushi at the King's luau, and it was mighty tasty. Again- once in a while is OK, and it's GOT to browned a little to wash off the clammy gel stuff.

And Vegemite is hella nasty.

-martin

(And I'm sorry about this post Bruce)

Hey, I LOVE SPAM! I could eat a whole can alone as a kid (I even liked the contents!)

Two stories I have heard: Years ago a US WWII Vet who served on Guadalcanal told me he would make lemonade by putting lemon drop candies in his metal canteen cup and put it in the sun. It was so hot (115 degrees) the candy would quickly melt and form "lemonade". However, when he opened a can of SPAM the jelly around the "meat" was still solid-like cosmoline. It would probably survive an atomic attack - Makes you proud to be an American!.

Also during the war we sent so much SPAM to the Russians as part of our War Aid Program they nicknamed it "The Second Front".

Another reason for the popularity is the shear amount left behind after the war. It was free, filled the stomach, and if you think about it, exotic. When I was in Ireland, people were pounding down Budweiser, and Coors, and paying extra for it because it was an import. People consume odd stuff if it is in limited amounts, or not from the area. Spam is not bad anyway, it is just pork shoulder and ham. Unlike the Hotdogs or lunch meat which are allowed to contain ANY part of a cow, pig or chicken, and only has to list it as Beef, Pork, or Chicken. I love when I am enjoying some Spam, and my Spamophobic friends come up eating a hotdog and say "god, do you know what's in that stuff?" and I say "yeah, pork shoulder and ham. Do you know what's in that?"
Tiki King
enjoying Spam since 1963

I think it's time we held a SPAM eating contest. Perhaps at the next tiki gathering?

It could do wonders for the Tiki movement, just like the big hot dog contest held at Nathan's Coney Island each year!

-Mike

Carve spam blocks into moais!!!!

Spam Moai....maybe we have next years winner there...http://www.iphc.washington.edu/staff/aaron/art/Spam.html

On 2002-09-06 15:03, martiki6 wrote:
Carve spam blocks into moais!!!!

My friend,
Your creativity is only surpassed by your sense of humor.

Howzit!

Hey Polynesian Pop, My mother makes the best corned beef with oinions and garlic, on top of some garlic fried rice in da morning, ewww MASARAP! (delicious)
Hey, does anyone in San Diego know if they sell Pork Lau Lau anywhere? It's smoked pork steamed in taro leaf. one of da local fovorite grinds here on da islands.

animal that spam comes from... a spig?!

Live Aloha

Gecko Brah!

You want Lau Lau? Next time you stop by we'll go to The Loft here in Huntington Beach. They have monster Lau Lau, not some little piece of pork, and butterfish, but mondo size!

Hey Polynesian Pop, My mother makes the best corned beef with oinions and garlic, on top of some garlic fried rice in da morning, ewww MASARAP! (delicious)

**Poly-Pop ***

Bartender, make mine a glass of WATAHHH!!!!!

[ Edited by: PolynesianPop 2013-02-04 20:32 ]

I've gotta say that some of the Hawaiian spam recipes here have led me to re-appraise this canned treat. Spam use in the UK has dipped to virtually nothing, probably because the most popular way of serving it was dipped in batter and then fried!! Bleeurrgh. As Bill Hicks once said, 'You boil pizza?'

Next time I go shopping, Spam will be top of the list.

Trader Woody
PS - Vegemite? For lightweights.
Marmite is the real deal.

Shoots Bong i like go! ewww mo betta lau lau ova de! cannot wait already. where u stay brah? (where are you at) same house? it's a date.

Polynesian Pop, any time brahda any time u like visit, call me. we go fo local grinds!
Manapua, chicken katsu, lau lau, BBQ mixed plate, o' just da ol kine "Loco Moco" brah!

alohaz!
haawaiiian

Gecko!

We're still in the same house and I'll have a Mai Tai waiting!

My daughter Sami will sing you some more tunes from South Pacific. She wants to go to U of H in a few years; little hapa haole girl will fit right in.

See you then my man!

A thing of tiki is a joy forever

[ Edited by: Tiki_Bong on 2002-09-11 16:17 ]

UH all the way baby! the whole island watched UH play BYU the other day and were so mad we lost! Don't let her go to BYU here! she betta be a Warrior or a Rainbow for all my UH Rainbows 4 life fans!

Alohaz!

Hawaii has the largest per capita consumption of SPAM in the USA.