Spam spam spam spam

 It's the 5th of July, and it was on this date in 1937 that Spam, the cooked pork product in a can, was first sold by the Hormel Corporation.

The day has not yet dawned that I have tasted Spam, and I am happy to tell you why. My father, serving in the US Navy during World War II, was served Spam for breakfast, lunch and dinner more times than he was willing to recount. Also on the bill of fare in the galley of the USS Delta was something that still exists, according to the WWW, but I have never seen: powdered eggs. And he and his fellow bluejackets had to wait in line to be served this gruel.

Because of all this, my father, who was not a bossy person, did lay down several dietary laws in the family home: No Spam. No powdered eggs. And No waiting in line for food. 

Forget the powdered eggs; I can't even imagine them. But Spam is popular, so someone must like it! It is sold in 41 countries on six continents.

If you care to make your own home Spam, just round up some pork and ham (the 90% pig shoulder, 10 percent ham!) and then add salt, water, modified potato starch, sugar, and sodium nitrite. That's a preservative; you don't want your precious fake Spam to go bad on you. Oh, and you will need cans. That's the secret of Spam. They shove all this offal into a can and bake it, which produces a natural gelatin.

Ummm! Natural gelatin! It's almost like you get a free dessert!

And don't even worry about Spam's high amounts of fat, preservatives, and sodium. It's all part of the thrill of eating food whose trade name became the perfect nickname for unwanted email.

But someone, somewhere, likes it, and I'm sure we'll hear from them here: