My mother is in the hospital and is on a soft food diet. I've helped her fill out her menu card for a few days (read: I've filled out her menu card when I have been present, and my father has filled it out when I haven't).

My mother gets either pureed beef or pureed chicken. It looks like a damn grey rectangle. This is accompanied by mashed potatoes, which looks like a damn beige rectangle. When my father or I pulls the lid off the entree tray, she screams "TAKE IT AWAY!!!!" I don't blame her - I wouldn't eat it.

She also gets applesauce (that she refuses), jello (that she takes with great reluctance), tea loaded with sugar (that she accepts), and soup (that she accepts depending on the soup - actually the soup isn't half bad for hospital food).

This is for lunch - my father, husband, and I are there to encourage her to eat. For dinner and breakfast ... she is presented with a tray of food, but it's outside visiting hours, so my guess is that she's refusing everything but the tea.

Bottom line, that pureed beef / chicken loaf shouldn't be served to anyone. Frell. *I* turned up my nose at it!

I'm going to Hawaii in a few weeks, and I've been a few times over the past couple years. The one thing that I found most shocking while I was there is that the locals love Spam! I guess because it's cheap? But you can get it pretty much anywhere there. My boyfriend (who lived there for 3 years) told me that you can even get it as a pizza topping or order it at McDonald's! So bizarre.

I know this is a...well...silly question, but I'll ask anyway. What in the heck is Spam? My mom and dad used to send me care packages when I was in undergrad, and one time they put Spam in there. I thought it was ham when I saw it. When I put it in my mouth I was like..."Yuck, what kind of ham is this?" My roommate at the time was like, it's Spam. I never asked or knew what it was made out of. I just knew that it was really disgusting, to me. My parents never packed it in my care package again.

Hawaii....that's wonderful! Have fun! :)

Spam is a ham product...ham is in it! My parents liked it, learned to eat it during the Depression, and it's not bad...if you're hungry enough. My mom would dip slices in egg and then flour and fry it in a little melted Crisco. Breakfast food or dinner.
I believe it got to be popular in Hawaii during WWII, when meat was rationed.

Very interesting read:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spam

Funny thing – Phired Up Productions (the fraternity and sorority recruitment experts!) use Spam as a “reality check” for us Greeks at the beginning of their presentations. I was fortunate enough to sit through one of these a few years ago, and it was actually quite eye-opening. The presenter started off talking about Spam, and then brought a volunteer to the front. He gave the volunteer a Spam hat, Spam t-shirt, tote bag, banner, etc. and completely decked him out in Spam stuff. Everyone was laughing. Then the presenter turned to the audience and said, “I don’t know why you’re laughing – this is what all of you look like to every non-Greek on your campus.”

Then the presenter asked everyone to yell out words that came to mind when they thought of Spam, and he walked around the audience looking for specific answers. “Gross,” “Disgusting,” and “Horrible,” were just some of the things people said. After he received a good number of answers that were all pretty similar, he said, “By a show of hands, how many people here have actually tried Spam?” Maybe only 5 hands went up. Of course he was demonstrating stereotypes, and how people tend to listen to what others tell them, regardless of whether or not they’ve experienced something for themselves (relating to how some non-Greeks view us, even if they’ve had little to no experience with Greek life)

Again, very enlightening.

See, Spam is good for something! :p

So it is meat, after all. I thought it was some kind of soy or something, lol. Thanks ASTalumna06 and AnchorAlumna for responding to my post. I can actually say I've been educated today and the subject was Spam. :p

Ya know, every time I hear Spam mentioned, I think of this video. :)
http://youtu.be/ZcJjMnHoIBI

Spam is one of those things that people became too "cool" for sometime in the 1980s, like polyester. Of course polyester came back big time in the 1990s with a lot of marketing. If Spam would change its name, more people would probably eat it.

Spam and Vienna Sausages most definitely belong to the "nostalgia food" category for anyone over 40 - that is, you might try eating them again because you loved them as a child.

Not for everyone over 40 -- I sure didn't love them as a child. We never had either in our house. Spam was encountered a few times at someone else's home, and never enjoyed. Vienna sausages were only encountered on Boy Scout camping trips and were always disappointing.

This has double meaning written all over it.

http://xfinity.comcast.net/blogs/tv/...anteen-boy.jpg

And sardines are the bomb.

Well, somebody has her mind in the gutter.

Speaking of which, and to the subject of the thread, anyone up for spotted dick?


http://demotivate.me/mediafiles/400/...01153008pm.jpg

CTFU!!!!

Re: Vienna sausages.

Huge difference between these:
http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_ll...7g6oo1_400.jpg


And these:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...stchen_fcm.jpg


Those last ones taste great! The ones above... yeah smothered in ketchup maybe.

Don't cry for Spam - it continues to do well, with several varieties and an almost cult-like following. http://www.spam.com/ "All of this passion and demand has amounted to this: in 2002, the seven-billionth can of SPAM® product was produced. Chew on that for awhile."

I am not a big fan, mainly because when my father was in the Air Force we ate a LOT of it. You can put cloves in it and pretend it's a ham, Mom, but it's not. Mac and cheese with Spam was a staple.

I've had Spam cooked and prepared in many ways. Still nasty.

I must respectfully disagree. I can't stand either of those. haha