Guam’s Pacific Daily News reports:
Ben Torres modified a local favorite dish to win the fourth annual SPAM Cook-off Islandstyle last weekend.
The 53-year-old Barrigada resident’s “Spicy SPAM Balls,” which is made up of ingredients used in fried rice, rolled into a ball and quick fried, bested the dishes of five other finalists. With the win, Torres received $1,000 in cash and a trip for two to Austin, Minn., the SPAM capital of the world.
The SPAM Museum is worth seeing, Ben. But bring your own food.
SPAM played a crucial role in World War II, and not just in the Pacific Islands.
As America entered World War II, SPAM luncheon meat played a crucial role overseas. With Allied forces fighting to liberate Europe, Hormel Foods provided 15 million cans of food to troops each week. SPAM immediately became a constant part of a soldiers’ diets, and earned much praise for feeding the starving British and Soviet armies as well as civilians….
- SPAM was used as a B-ration – to be served in rotation with other meats behind the lines overseas and at camps and bases in the States. However, many times GIs were eating it two or three times a day….
- Soviet Union leader Nikita Khrushchev wrote, “Without SPAM we wouldn’t have been able to feed our army.”
- Margaret Thatcher, then a teenager, vividly remembered opening a tin of SPAM on Boxing Day (an English holiday observed the day after Christmas). She stated, “We had some lettuce and tomatoes and peaches, so it was SPAM and salad.”
Far Outliers 