My kitchen reeks of fried SPAM. Yes, I said SPAM. I’d found a clever article on the reappearance of SPAM here in our recessioned American lives—she claimed it wasn’t so bad, really.
She lied.
I assigned the article to my class as we were discussing “American foods” (I feel sorry that we Americans are forced to claim SPAM, but some truths cannot be fudged, unfortunately). As I was preparing for class I thought, “If we’re going to read about it, we really ought to do a taste test. How bad can it be? Perhaps I am misremembering its cloying, gelatinous texture and overpowering, processed taste.” And so I found myself standing over the stove, browning a can of diced SPAM at 9:00 last night.
***
I’d searched the SPAM website for recipes and clicked on “Blue Ribbon State Fair” recipes. I figure at least one person has decided these recipes are good, thus giving me better odds than simply searching the ‘net at large. I check out an instructional video on making “SPAMaroni and Cheese Swaddlers” with a Toddlers and Tiaras-esque headshot of, I presume, the pre-teen creator of “Swaddlers”. Given my present repulsive associations with the term “swaddlers” (i.e. eating my newborn son and/or his diapers of the same name), I decide to pass on this recipe and move on to “SPAMkins Breakfast Muffins.” The SPAMkins’ chief virtues are that I already have the ingredients, the SPAM will actually be cooked, and the SPAMkins seem more likely to be palatable at room temperature than some of the other options.
Perhaps they were more palatable, but that is more a statement about the palatability of SPAM-based foods at large than about these particular muffins.
The SPAMkins were conceptually something of a McGriddle, but in muffin form. The recipe called for making a strange, yeasty batter for the bottom and then layering cinnamon-sugar, a spoon full of browned SPAM, a glob of beaten egg, and a drizzle of maple syrup. Yes, I said “a drizzle of maple syrup.” On top of beaten eggs. As I assembled the SPAMkins my husband kept telling me not to sweat it—that nothing I did was really going to make these things taste worse.
I popped them in the oven (a cold oven, mind you, per the recipe’s instructions), set the timer, and hoped for the best. I then dumped the remaining fried SPAM in the trash can and gave thanks that tomorrow was garbage day. And then I turned on all of the fans in the house in a vain attempt to suck out the stench of browned SPAM. Vain, vain, vain.
The SPAMkins emerged glistening from the oven, the task of tasting saved until the next morning’s class.
***
There were looks of horror when I announced that I’d brought SPAM to class. One of the looks was mine. I popped open the lid of the Tupperware, slid out a SPAMkin, and passed them around. I unenthusiastically began peeling the cupcake liner from the SPAMkin. Except that the liner was stuck to the SPAMkin as though concrete had been a key ingredient of the recipe. It took several minutes to peel off enough paper for a bite-able portion of SPAMkin to emerge. I stared, summoning my courage, stifling my gorge. Closing my eyes, I took a small bite.
The assault came in waves. First, the cinnamon-sugar and cold lump-ness of the muffin batter. “It’s not so bad it’s not so bad it’s not so bad” I chanted to myself. Next, the salty-smoke explosions across my mouth as my incisors met with chunks of SPAM. “Yuck. YUUUUCK. But I can do it. I can do it. I can do it.” Then, just as the taste settled into unpleasant but bearable: the slime—the everlasting slime of cold eggs and maple syrup. “Ew. Ew. Ew. Ew. EW!!!.” I can still feel that cold, stickiness coating my mouth, my whole body, my very soul. Can I ever be made clean again?
***
The aforementioned SPAMaroni Swaddlers video concludes with a challenge to “break the monotony!” by cooking with SPAM. The website features poor, sad looking eggs that are transformed into smiling, happy eggs once one hovers the mouse (a can of SPAM) over the eggs. “Break what monotony?” I ask myself. “The monotony of eating actual food??”
[image credit: spam.com]
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