I eat therefore I SPAM. It was estimated that islanders on Guam consumed eight pounds of
SPAM per person per year—try to top that Hawai’i! The Spaniards may have brought pigs to
Guam, but the Americans brought us SPAM (invented on July 5, 1937). It’s actually much
easier to cook SPAM kelaguen than chicken kelaguen. SPAM was the most loved food at
my childhood home. It was what my mom fed to my brothers, my sisters, and our dogs for
breakfast lunch and dinner. They say you aren’t an “authentic” Chamoru unless you enjoy
BBQ, eating SPAM, drinking Budweiser, making babies, chewing Pugua, not working, and
beating people up (especially haoles). On Guam and in other former and current colonies
the canned meat has saved lives, but may now be endangering more. Among Chamorus, a
staggering 60 percent are either diabetic or pre-diabetic. Even military recruiters are worried
that young Chamorros are getting too fat and unhealthy to enlist. SPAM becomes counter
recruitment cuisine. The above SPAM recipe has been passed down from generation to
generation in my family. But then the internet happened, and SPAM began clogging our
online arteries and lost the luster of its sing-song repetition. How can I prove that I’m an
indigenous person and not a SPAM script? At this year’s Hormel SPAM Cook-Off in Guam,
the Polish inspired “Pika Pieirogi” ousted the “Crispy Wanton Spam Ravioli” for first place.
What would Jesus eat? Either way you cook it, SPAM is one of the few canned meats that
contains the same “stuff” that it did during my grandparents’ days. But now you can buy
turkey SPAM, smoke-flavored SPAM, hot and spicy SPAM, garlic SPAM, SPAM lite and
many other versions, which reflects our more complicated, post-modern, and stressful lives.
If you bring your SPAM labels to the Sorensen Media Group Offices in Hagatna, you can
redeem 12 labels for a SPAM shirt and 9 for a SPAM hat! Because Guam is located across
the international dateline, the Super Bowl occurs on Monday morning, causing truancy at
public schools. Thus, the Guam Department of Education has decided to close school on
that special day. Students can now enjoy the traditional local breakfast of fried rice and fried
SPAM as they squat in front of their television sets on Guam’s newly declared school
holiday, Super Bowl Monday! I wonder if school children on Guam discuss that scene from
Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath (published in 1939), when the tractor driver stops near a
tenant house and eats his sandwich of white bread, pickle, cheese, and SPAM. The curious,
starving children surround the driver but they don’t speak to him. They don’t even watch
him chew his food. Instead, they are hypnotized by the hand that carries the SPAM towards
our mouths.