Here's some more details...
Posted on 12/07/2008 8:07:40 AM PST by vietvet67
In times of trouble the United States has historically turned to a tin of pink processed meat to see it through – and so it is again that sales of Spam are soaring as the recession bites.
They have shot up by more than 10 per cent in the past three months and the Hormel Foods Corporation has had to introduce a double shift at its factory in Austin, Minnesota, seven days a week to keep up with demand.
Spam costs only about $2.40 (£1.65) for a 12-ounce tin and keeps for ever, which earned it the slogan: meat with a pause button. Hungry consumers, desperate to cut back on spending but keen to put meat on the table, have been buying the product that “helped win the Second World War”.
The rise coincides with a record level of Americans using food stamps, the programme that helps the needy to buy food. More than 31.5 million Americans used the stamps in September – up by 17 per cent from a year ago, according to government data.
Spam was invented during the Great Depression by Jay Hormel, the son of the founder of the company. It is a brick of ham, pork, sugar, salt, water, potato starch and a hint of sodium nitrite “to help Spam keep its gorgeous pink color”.
Austin advertises itself as Spam-town and it boasts 13 restaurants with Spam on the menu. Johnny’s Spamarama menu includes eggs benedict with Spam for $7.35.
Employees are working flat out and next door the slaughter house butchers 19,000 pigs a day. “People are realising it’s not that bad a product,” said Dan Johnson, 55, who operates a 70ft (20m) oven in the factory.
(Excerpt) Read more at timesonline.co.uk ...
I wonder if anyone gets Spam spam in their spam folder.
Cat food is cheaper............and when mixed with onions and green pepper its purrrrrrrrrrring good!
lol.
Eating cat food would give me paws. :-)
Not to hijack a thread but to this day my dad will not eat mutton or navy beans. Spent the war on a Navy tug going from Portland Maine to Portland, Oregon. That’s mostly what they got to eat.
My father was in the Air Force. Fifty some years later he avoids mashed potatoes and chipped beef on toast.
That I do! A great, quick snack when you’re in a rush. Not the healthiest, but it beats a candy bar or bag of chips.
can one extract the sodium nitrite out of spam to make it
feasable?
I hope it doesn’t happen again too...but I will say one thing..once you have been through times like that it stays with you for the rest of your life! Experiences like that focus your attention on the basics admirably and usually make you a better person!
To this day nothing gets wasted in my household...98% of our meals are made at home..no prepacked stuff. I make all the meals now as my wife is still working.
For the 7 days menu this week we will have for dinners...
(1)Irish stew, (2)Minestrone, (3)Braised steak, (4)Liver and onions, (5)Fish and chips, (6)Lentil soup and (7)Scotch eggs. Desserts will be bread and butter pudding or rice pudding or fruit. All home made!
Most of those dishes are cheap as chips and the bread pudding uses up any stale bread. We rarely eat out!
We are so very blessed here and now.
“I wonder if they STILL serve SOS in Chow Halls?”
They do...at the galley at NAS Pensacola and the chow hall in Katterbach, Germany, at least...GOOD STUFF! :)
Sounds like our menus! We had venison Swiss steak last night and mac’n’cheese is on the menu tonight. Tomorrow I will use up some leftovers for a large chicken pot pie. All that will have enough leftovers for several more meals. I also make bread pudding and bake my own bread, grind my own burger, dry, freeze, etc from the garden. We buy fried chicken from a local place maybe once a month, just because it is excellant, affordable and easier than doing it myself. That is almost the extent of our eating out. Maybe appetizers and a drink one every 6 weeks or 2 months in a place we like in the nearest city.
My dad impressed me more than he knew. I cannot bear to waste anything,especially food. We are both still working in our own businesses and hopefully will do so until we simply are incapable. We are grateful to have an income in these times.
I had a grandmother who was born and reared in the Ukraine and who could do anything that needed doing. She has been gone for a very long time, but I remember her and she is also an inspiration. My husband has taught himself over the years to repair or make from scratch almost anything we need in the way of tools, home/car maintenance or furniture. I sew and am relearning to knit. I am also a felter. We try to be as self-sufficient as possible.
You are right: necessity does focus the mind and then the hands follow.
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