Random Item from my BLOG Ideas File

SPAM

To me, SPAM is either:

o Unnecessary  and or, unsolicited messages clogging all of my inputs, or

o  To me, a delicious meat by-product, that I like to eat right out of the can.

Reminisce Magazine for February and March 2020 has a nice little article about SPAM (A Meat for all Seasons.) Here are some things I learned by reading the article:

01.  American GIs made up this jingle that I could have used in my recent blog entry on sleep.

"Now I lay me down to sleep

And pray the Lord

The SPAM don't keep"

02.  SPAM was "enjoyed" by Russians and other allies in WWII, as well as our American GIs.

03.  Early computer users referred to repeated bombardment of unsolicited emails as "spamming," relating it to a famously hilarious Monty Python sketch.

04.  The Hormel Company developed SPAM in 1937, just in time to be used in WWII as a "real" meat substitute. Ingredients at inception  were:

pork

salt

water

sugar

sodium nitrate

Later, in 2009, potato starch was added, "to soak up the unsigthtly gelatin that forms in the can."

QUSTION:  What did GIs who were observant Jews do about this pork product?

05.  Ken Daigneau, brother of a Hormel executive named the product SPAM, a combination of SPices and hAM.

06.  A total of 133 million cans of SPAM were shipped overseas to feed Americans and allies from 1940 to 1945.  That's an awesome figure. However its not even close to this one:  An estimated 8,000,000,000 cans of SPAM have been sold "world-wide"  since 1937!  (Is that "quadrillions?" A  lot more than the "trillions" of our National Debt.... at least for now.)

07.  Six beautiful "Spamettes" toured the world from 1946 to 1953 on behalf of Hormel.

All of this SPAM talk is getting me anxious to open one of those gelatinous cans and scoff down some of that (to me) tasty concoction. 

By the way, Dollar Stores have copy cat versions of SPAM... for just one dollar, and the ones I've tried have been pretty good,  but, of course, not as delicious.

For further SPAM information, I think you can get it on reminisce.com.  And maybe even on You Tube.