Peculiar Produce: Canned Meat Edition
I have to issue a warning about my last post: don’t eat the kiwano unless you’re a fan of intestinal distress. Seriously, it apparently has a bunch of dietary fibre in it, so unless you’re looking to get a case of the runs, avoid it at all costs.
And now:
I know what you’re thinking: "David, this isn't produce!" If you'll recall, I said in my first post that I wouldn't be exclusively covering produce in the interest of not limiting my options. And now you're probably thinking, “Oh David, this isn’t obscure, Spam has been around for God knows how long, this post is garbage.” Well, consider the following: have you actually ever eaten Spam in your life? It used to be a big thing, but not anymore. Yeah, you’ve passed it by on the shelves in the grocery store, but have you bought a can and eaten it? Probably not. But now you don’t have to, because I’m going to do it for you.
Here’s what it looks like out of the can. It’s basically a meat brick.
I cut a slice off of it to test it out. It tastes a bit like ham, a bit like bologna… the most generic pork taste you can possibly think of. You get the feeling that it’s just a whole bunch of different meats mashed together into this brick. Not bad, but nothing to write home about. Inspired by the picture on the can, I cut off two more slices, threw them between two slices of bread, added a bit of cheese, onion, and mustard, then microwaved it for 45 seconds. It got extremely hot on the bottom, but more importantly, the cheese melted a bit and the meat heated up to make a hot Spam sandwich. It was not bad, although the Spam kind of overpowered the cheese and onions. The expiration date on the can said 2018, which is either a testament to the secure packaging or an indication of how little the product has to do with actual food. It cost about four dollars, so that’s pretty decent for a food product that could probably survive a nuclear holocaust with no adverse changes to its taste or nutritional content.
Next up, I had a tin of smoked herring from the Brunswick fish company:
Like the Spam, it’s probably something you’ve seen before but never tried. So I figured, why not?
I was expecting individual de-boned herrings inside when I opened it, but instead I got this cat food-looking wad of fish.
I grimaced and dug in. It turned out to be pretty decent - a little salty, not too strong of a fishy taste, an all right texture. I ate the whole tin right then and there. I’m not sure how you’re supposed to use it, maybe put it on a sandwich or in a salad like tuna, or eat it straight out of the container like I did. I doubt it matters anyway. I paid $1.80 for it, which seems solid for what you get.