Why spam in hawaii

As troops feasted on the canned meat — its long shelf-life making it perfect for wartime conditions — its popularity spread to the people whose land those troops occupied. The other option was salted or dried meat. It was great.

Where our military bases are, Spam seems to follow. When people first immigrated to America from different places in Europe, Africa and Asia, they would continue to eat their own foods, he explained.

For those living in Hawaii, these goods were simultaneously inexpensive and regarded as a luxurious hallmark of Americanness. In this way, Spam — a food that began as "all-American" as apple pie and meatloaf , said Wyman — ironically became most associated with ethnic communities. The most popular manifestation of Spam is undoubtedly Spam musubi — a piece of grilled Spam placed atop a block of rice and wrapped in seaweed.

Been in a hawaii for 5 years. I make musubi, SPAM with breakfast that I make for him to take to work, put it in the rice cooker with veggies and shoyu.. And yes, there are tons of different flavors here!! SPAM if good food!! Sugar free wheat bread. Sliced cheddar cheese. Garlic sprinkles and butter to grill. Grill and brown the spam first. Then put it all together for the best grill cheese. For many of us, Spam may seem like a kind of joke food.

If you've ever been to Hawaii, though, or eaten at a Hawaiian restaurant or food truck, you couldn't have failed to notice that Spam plays a starring role in that state's cuisine. What's up with that? Doesn't Hawaii have all kinds of delicious foods of its own such as pineapples and kalua pork? Then again, they do eat poi, which, by comparison, makes Spam taste just like that aforementioned filet mignon. To guide me with my feelings about Spam, I've been lucky to have the help of Arnold Hiura, a bona fide Hawaiian cuisine historian.

Through him, I've really understood the complicated relationship that Hawaii's people—including myself—have with Spam. We had government-mandated blackouts, we had food rationing, and food restrictions, which we felt the pressure of even more because we were away from the mainland. Spam was one of those scarce food rations, and it was something that my ancestors lived on during the war.

We even have a goddamn Spam Jam food event once a year, where you can taste shitty little things like Spam-flavored macadamia nuts; 25, people attend the event just to eat Spam. Some of my earliest memories are hearing about my grandmother pounding tannic-ass bamboo shoots that she cut herself from the riverbed to eat with Spam.

I wasn't a cook then, but hearing those stories about Spam sparked something in me. We cut it up, we sauteed it, we simmered with shoyu and sugar; we turned into something else that was beautiful. During the war, there was this constant fear of shipments of food suddenly not making it to Hawaii anymore, so a lot of people during that time had a tendency to hoard things like Spam and toilet paper. My grandmother hoarded up to five cases of Spam at a time. This paved the way for the modern-day Hawaiian cultural practice of hoarding things.