Tag Archives: scary food

SPAM is not mystery meat!

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Hawaii’s SPAM Cookbook

SPAM may be an acronym for shoulder pork and ham, or spiced ham, depending upon which resource you consult.  Hormel indicates that Spam Classic (I love that) is made from “pork with ham, salt [I’ll say!], water, potato starch, sugar, and sodium nitrite.  If you set aside the saturated fat, salt and processing, I guess it’s not as bad as a non-food item that’s sold as food.  I don’t know.  I like to have SPAM musubi or some SPAM and eggs a couple times a century, so it’s not such a big deal for me.  My father loved SPAM, since he ate it in the army, and he would often be seen opening a can with that crazy key resulting in a sharp ribbon of metal that would sometimes slide off course and become vewy intewesting.

When I make SPAM I use the turkey variety, which does not have mechanically-seperated turkey, by the way.  (The USDA requires that it be listed if used.)  This contains less saturated fat, and is the lesser of several evils.  While turkey SPAM does not have the texture of “real” SPAM (and that says something), I usually marinate it in a teriyaki-like sauce anyway, so it winds up tasting the same.

I found a simple recipe in Hawaii’s SPAM Cookbook that I adapted.  It tastes good served over rice – close to SPAM musubi, especially if you serve it with a few strips of nori and season the rice with sushi vinegar.

Soy Sauce SPAM

1/4 cup soy sauce
1/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup mirin
2 teaspoons grated ginger
SPAM, sliced; I use two 12-ounce cans for our family of 4 plus a large dog

1).  Bring all except SPAM to a boil in a low skillet; I use a large skillet so I am able to spread the SPAM out
2).  Lay in sliced SPAM and simmer over low flame for 3 or 4 minutes, turning over midway through

Serve with rice and have a bottle of hoisin sauce standing by.

Spam over rice in a bowl

On collecting cookbooks

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Over the years I’ve collected a number of interesting old cookbooks, many from the 1940’s through the 1970’s, a time when convenience foods, casseroles and cocktail party appetizers were all the rage.  Recipes in these retro cookbooks are often scary.  What, in my opinion, constitutes scary?  Not the liberal use of butter, cream or meat, since all wholesome foods have their rightful place in a healthy diet.  Scary generally means something that does not occur in nature, or something so bastardized it is only a shadow of its former self.  It does not necessarily mean processed, since some processed foods are fine.  Processed just means you are taking something in its raw form and transforming it into something palatable.  Certainly you can take this to the extreme, but you really need to stop and think before you condemn all processed foods.  Take the much-maligned canned meat product, Spam.  I may call a ‘Spam cordon bleu’ recipe scary for its odd use of ingredients, but not because Spam itself is evil.  Spam is, essentially, shoulder pork and ham.  The worst ingredient here is the small amount of sodium nitrite, but this is added to all cured meats, i.e., salami, bacon, in order to keep a nice color and help prevent botulism.  When you compare Spam with a product like Cool Whip, a dessert topping like whipped cream with not a trace of cream (or even milk) but with  hydrogenated oil and high fructose corn syrup, well, Spam starts looking as good as wheatgrass.

Other things from this era that make me fearful are lime Jell-O aspics containing mayonnaise and shredded vegetables.  These materials, in my opinion, should never have been brought together in one mold – ever.  I bring this up because aspics loom large in retro cooking, and some are not to be believed.  The whole appetizing genre during these years is chock full of oddities, for that matter, so if you lay your hands on a cookbook from 1950, be sure to take a gander at the hors d’oeuvres section.

In my mix are retro cooking guides that are completely sane – often to my surprise, since my collection focuses on the unusual.  For example, I have an Elsie the Cow-themed book published by Borden in 1952 that contains mostly classic, if dairy-intense, recipes.  On the other hand, many of the cookbooks and pamphlets published by manufacturers are outrageous in the application of their products, a situation made even worse by the general trend toward convenience during those years.

I have been making an attempt of late to bring publications in from the early 1900’s, opening up a whole world of information in terms of how the culinary world adapted to technological advances, like electricity and gas.  These books date back to an era when refrigeration was new, and many even advise readers that a refrigerator (and we’re not talking a three-door KitchenAid here) is “nice” for a few things, like meat and butter, but “not really necessary.”  There is nothing that brings home the convenience of modern culinary life quicker than reading a chapter on how to store perishable provisions in 1910.

My collection of 1980’s and 1990’s cookbooks is not extensive, but the ones I buy for the hell of it generally have an interesting hook, so you’ll see some of those along with my workhorses, like The Frugal Gourmet series, by and by, as I post about them

I’ll be adding cookbooks as quickly as I am able.  As always, contact me if you would like more information about a particular book.

Pink aspics

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Crab aspic in loaf form artdeco

I busted out two pink aspics today.  I’ve been hooked on aspics for some time now.  I’ve always loved them and, since I collect cookbooks, I come across lots of them in books from the 1930s through the 1960s – many of them tres outré.  Here are two retro creations, one more a molded salmon mousse and the other a crabmeat cocktail in aspic.  They are great during the summer and for a good chuckle.

Salmon aspic in ring mold form

They need to tell you about this kind of day in advance

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My father is in a coma and I spent the day glued to his bedside in a reclining chair with a string of Christmas lights on over his bed.  He loves Christmas lights.  The nursing supervisor, who is very nice, brought in a platter of sandwiches, chips and sodas in the wee hours of the morning for “the family,” figuring that there would be a group vigil.  Well, there was just me, eating a ham salad sandwich and a bag of potato chips every few hours around the clock and then picking at the regular meals that were brought in for him.  When you are a captive audience needing to remain awake in relative darkness you have few options other than eating and drinking coffee at regular intervals.

Why, oh why, was this not turkey breast day?  Or salami day?  Why did I have to hit ham salad day?  I didn’t know anyone still ate ham salad.

I’m telling you you have not fully experienced all that life has to offer until you spend 36 hours in a tiny room with your dying father under Christmas lights listening to Michael Jackson belt out “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus” while eating questionable, and then later semi-rancid, sandwiches and drinking coffee out of a spill-proof cup.

Then there was the heat.

That room was a good 85 degrees F. and I was in a sweat suit.  The same sweat suit I had on when I jumped out of bed at midnight the night before, I might add.  I had the forethought to pack extra underwear and socks, so I went into my Dad’s little bathroom — where I could still keep half an eye on him — for a sponge bath and to hand wash unmentionables in the sink in case I needed them down the road.  I hung them up on the 35 handrails in there and all was bone dry in four hours, which gives you an idea of the heat situation.

Every two hours a nurse came in to give my dad his pain meds.  Every four hours a team of nurses came in to change his position and to make sure I was doing alright.  After about 35 hours I was getting to the point of seriously needing sleep, but I had to remain awake to keep a lookout for signs of pain or discomfort, and I wanted to be alert when he died.

I remember glancing at the clock and noticing the time was 12:25 a.m. (now 11/18/06) and then putting my head back in the recliner to rest my eyes for a moment.  Bad idea.  The next thing I knew I was jolted awake as if a gong went off in my head, and I shot a glance at the clock – 12:45 a.m.  In the fraction of a second it took me to turn my head I realized the raspy sound of my father’s labored breathing was gone, and knew that what must have woken me up was that sound stopping all of a sudden.  I did not want to look at his face because I knew he was gone.  I just sat there.  I didn’t know how to feel, and remember wondering if he was floating around the room.

He and I had spoken many times about what might happen after death, whether communication with the living was even possible, but no matter how often we spoke about all of that it didn’t prepare me for that split second when I knew he was dead.

I had been talking with him off and on about all kinds of nonsense.  Even though he was in a coma, he was still in his body and I knew where to direct my energy.  When I moved closer to him to say a final good-bye, I was not at ease because I didn’t know where he was contained — if he was contained at all.  His body was so still and somewhat scary to me, though I don’t know why it should have been.  I suppose I felt that my thoughts were no longer my own and that everything in my mind would be accessible.

I sat there for some time, then said I was sorry I fell asleep and eventually made my way to the nursing station.

My father, Frank Valencia, and I about 1964/1965

My father, Frank Valencia, and I about 1964/1965

Frank Valencia on 10/5/06

Frank Valencia on 10/28/06

Frank and Renate Valencia on 11/6/06