Spam Musubi…
is absolutely delicious! And about now, most of you are wondering, ‘what the heck is Spam Musubi?’ Well, Wikipedia describes it as follows: Spam musubi is a popular snack and lunch food in Hawaii composed of a slice of grilled Spam on top of a block of rice, wrapped together with nori dried seaweed. Inexpensive and portable, Spam musubi are commonly found near cash registers in convenience stores all over Hawaii.
In April of 2006, myDarlin’ Robert Kenui Pope was giving me the ‘Local Boy’ tour of Hawaii. We started in Oahu, then on to Maui and finally to Kona. And on one of our day trips, we stopped at a gas station for a fill up for the car and for us. I found it funny that people would actually go to a gas station for lunch, but as I learned there were some delectable choices amongst which was Spam Musubi and Manapua (bun filled with char su pork). So as we ordered both to go, Robert told me of soccer games of days gone by when the girls were young, where the parents took turns bringing Spam Musubi for the team snack after the game.
We ate Spam Musubi and Manapua as we sat in the car in the parking lot of the gas station. And then we saw it, a sign that could change our lives forever. (if only I could locate the photo now…) It said: Cooks/Cashiers Wanted $10.00 hour. Whoa! Robert was a Chef and I was a manager for Front End Operations – so we would make a heck of a team! We took a photo of the sign and each sent it to our respective boss with a text that read: Found a job in Hawaii – won’t be coming back. Needless to say, we came back even against our best judgement.
And back on the mainland, Spam was a mainstay in our pantry along with the mold to make the rice perfectly fit the shape of a slice of Spam. And I, who quite honestly had been a Spam snob before I met myDarlin’, grew to love that fried piece of mystery meat and found myself defending it to others who hadn’t been converted yet.
myDarlin’s love affair with Spam ended last March, when he was instructed to stick to a low sodium diet to help keep his blood pressure in check. And being the funny man that he was, he wore his Spam t-shirt to the Heart Healthy meeting just to get the doctors and dieticians going. Always finding the humor in everything that he faced in life.
And so the other day, I ordered a ‘Waikiki’ (fried Spam w/egg) at our favorite restaurant in honor of myDarlin’. I am filled with gratitude as I remember all of the wonderful Spam moments over the past eleven years.
Remove far from me vanity and lies: give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with food convenient for me. Proverbs 30:8
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