You know how some things seem so polar opposite, you can’t imagine them together? And if you try to put them together, the result is almost discordant? For me, moments like that give me a little shiver up my spine that feels similar to what happens when I hear fingernails scraping on the chalkboard.
I had one such moment recently when Lingamish (again) changed the colors on his blog template–some shade of green hippo severely clashing with royal blue trim on the blog. At the time, I couldn’t think of a word to express what was happening to the nerve endings in my brain when I went to his blog. Lingamish himself described it as “Trippy”. And I thought that was a pretty good word for it.
Well, today I had a similar experience when I followed a link on my gmail home page to a recipe for Spam Imperial Tortilla Sandwiches (I always kind of wonder why the particular links show up when they do. Sometimes a link will be related to something I’ve emailed someone about recently. But I can’t figure out the connection with this one. Maybe I was talking about my redneck roots to someone and Google thought surely I needed one more recipe for how to use Spam?)
In any case, a recipe for Spam is what I was given with that link. And Spam in general, and Spam sandwiches in specific kind of gross me out. But I can comprehend that somebody, somewhere might like the idea.
It was when I read the recipe itself and the specific combination of ingredients that my brain started blowing fuses. How can alfalfa sprouts and Spam co-exist together? That’s not like Yin and Yang where one type of thing balances out the other. Spam and alfalfa sprouts–that’s not balance. Spam epitomizes processed food that is arguably non-food. Alfalfa, well that’s about as natural “pure food, just the way God made it” as you can get.
And, really, if you’re feeling the need to eat Spam for whatever reason–perhaps you’re short of time, you’re out on a camping trip, you’re in a post-hurricane scenario without electricity or running water–are you really going to take the time to purchase fresh dill and chop it up to add to the sandwich?
If you have Spam as an actual food option, does fresh chopped dill even show up on your radar screen? Or, coming at it from the other angle, if chopping up fresh dill is something you get in to, does Spam show up on your radar screen?
Eclectic as I may be, I have found my limits. Eating Spam with alfalfa sprouts, sunflower seeds and chopped fresh dill, nicely wrapped on a tortilla, is too eclectic for my brain to handle. (To say nothing of, I’m still trying to convince myself that Spam really does qualify as food, which would be an obvious prerequisite to preparing this recipe.)
But, just in case you are feeling brave, or, perhaps, in need of shaking up your life and stretching your boundaries or stirring something up because you’re feeling a bit bored with your diet–if, for whatever reason, the idea of Spam Imperial Tortilla Sandwiches appeals to you–here is the recipe. And, please, let me know how it turns out (and if you make it, I’d also love to hear WHY you decided to do it. I’m really curious, because the why behind this recipe is totally incomprehensible to me at the moment).
* Exported from MasterCook *
SPAM IMPERIAL TORTILLA SANDWICHES
Serving Size : 6
Preparation Time :0:00
1 cn SPAM Luncheon Meat (12 oz)
1 pk Cream cheese, softened (8oz)
1/3 c Chopped green onion
2 tb Chopped fresh dill
3 Flour tortillas (8″)
1 md Cucumber, peeled and thinly -sliced
1/4 c Sunflower seeds
1/2 c Alfalfa sprouts
In bowl, combine SPAM and cream cheese. Stir in green onion and dill. Spread 1/3 of SPAM mixture evenly over each tortilla. Top with 1/3 each cucumber, sunflower seeds, and alfalfa sprouts. Roll up tortilla jelly roll fashion and wrap in plastic wrap. Repeat with remaining tortillas. Refrigerate 2 hours. to serve, cut each roll in half.
[By the way, my brain has finally adjusted to Lingamish’s color combination, which probably means he is getting ready to change it. I find the adaptability of the brain to be incredibly fascinating.]
The Hippo is a thing of transcendent beauty. Spam Tortillas… I guess I’d have to try it. They might be better if you didn’t know what they were made of.
I don’t have trouble with the hippo per se. He really is quite adorable. And I loved the purple hippo on a black background. It’s the green with the blue that gives me difficulties.
And I agree with you on the knowledge of what is inside affecting the general palatability of the tortillas.
I feel the same way about putting sugar and cream in coffee. Why ruin a good cup of coffee? Why ruin a perfectly good spam-sandwich with all that junk?
fishon
So, Fishon, are you saying I should have named this post, “Who’s Messing With My Spam?” 🙂
If push came to shove, I’d eat a spam sandwich before I’d drink a cup of coffee.
I was already laughing out loud before this:
> and if you make it, I’d also love to hear WHY
Low on the funny meter? Yeah, right. 🙂
Hey, Codepoke, I was being SERIOUS there! The anthropologist in me knows there has to be a reason for someone who would normally eat Spam to try a recipe that includes fresh dill and alfalfa. Or vice versa. That reason (or reasons) has to be fascinating, and would be a nice way to understand and get to know a person better from an angle I otherwise wouldn’t have discovered.
Glad I made you laugh, though. That makes me laugh.
oh, this was hilarious. i’m totally with you on every disbelieving statement you gave and every reason you offered for why this is just wrong. 🙂
It’s funny because of all the people commenting on this post, I’m absolutely the most likely to echo Joey’s comment about Rachel’s “trifle” (which included parts of two recipes – one for a trifle and another for a beef casserole or some such.) After Ross declared, “It tastes like feet!” Joey responded, “Whats not to like? Custard GOOD, jelly GOOD, beef GOOD!!”
Would I eat this concoction?
Without batting an eyelash.
Why?
Because it’s there. And I’m hungry. And it’s food. What’s not to like? Spam? Good(good-ish enough anyway). Cream Cheese? Good. Sprouts? Come on! That’s not only good, it’s good for you!
So, it was funny because you are so right, and I so don’t care. ;-D
I could tell stories about things I cook, eat and enjoy that will curl your hair. I had some people going the other day with a stir fry I put together. They were really liking it, until I added milk and flour and turned the whole thing into a white gravy and put it over rice.
I ate that puppy for 3 days and loved it every day.
Of course, I wouldn’t cook this recipe because it has too many ingredients and steps and stuff.
So, anthropologize away. Hit me with your best shot.
Codepoke,
Thanks for indulging me with an explanation (is indulging the right word there?) Your reason makes sense. And that’s really what I was looking for 🙂 To be right from my perspective, but to acknowledge that there was certainly the possibility of another perspective and to hear the logic behind that perspective.
And I should make a distinction here. I couldn’t comprehend who would MAKE this recipe or why (since spam people and alfalfa people seem to be on different sides of the nutritional fence). With Christianne, I don’t think I could ever bring myself to put those ingredients together. If someone else WAS making it, though, I could eat it and probably would.
If you brought it to my house, so I didn’t have to cook dinner, I’d not only eat it, but my kids would too, and if they started to complain or make a face, they’d get my standard lecture about being thankful for God’s provision and not making demands on how his provision has to look…or taste. And then, after the first two bites, at least one of my children, but probably all four of them would go, “Wow, this is really good!” (And then my six year old would ask, “How old was the person that made this, Mom?” Because he wants to know if I’m old enough to be able to cook the same recipe just as well as the person who brought it did. No joking. He’s always ranking and evaluating people by age.)
Sorry to disappoint, I don’t make conclusions or assumptions based on my “anthropologizing”. I just want to understand what IS. You’ve helped me with that part, but I’m afraid an analysis of it won’t be forthcoming 🙂
You had me going there for a minute–I was trying to figure out how I missed “Joey’s comment” on this thread. I finally realized you were talking about some other people who had never commented here, nor had anything to do with this post. That was a hilarious story, though, and fit perfectly!
One of the artifacts of my marriage is a degree of pre-2004 cultural knowledge. That was an exchange from the hit TV show, “Friends,” and yes, it was funny. And once again, I identified with the “other” guy, instead of the “straight man.”
Everyone else in the room thinks Joey’s bizarre, and I’m sitting there being Joey (when I’m not busy being George.)
I wasn’t sure whether you’d know the reference, so I narrated the whole scene just in case.
I’m glad you narrated the whole scene. That was great.
Codepoke wrote metaphorically which I read literally:
“I ate that puppy for 3 days and loved it every day.”
and I remembered when, growing up in Viet Nam, I really did eat puppy, and nearly-hatched duck eggs (steamed of course), and pumpkin soup, and lots of fish and rice and water cress (which my brother made a Vietnamese pun about that always made everyone laugh), and the wonderful salty rotten-fish sauce on everything.
only once a year (it seemed), my parents would take us out to eat, Chinese or French seafood. but on birthdays, Mom would always cook Tex-Mex from cans of the “Old El Paso” brand with Tabasco sauce. So, when the U.S. military friends would share it from the commissary (which we only heard about and never visited, imagining it to be like heaven because it was also the source of the very occaisonal Smuckers strawberry preserves), we got Spam too. Just don’t remember the alphalpha, which was quite phoreign there.
(Wasn’t Joey like an anthropologist?)
J.K., I have that tendency–to interpret things literally first.
Thanks for sharing these food stories from Vietnam. It’s fun to think about the presence of Smuckers preserves being the criteria for heaven on earth 🙂
I’m guessing you’ve got many more interesting stories about being at the intersection of vastly different cultures. Have you written about any of that online? Third Culture Kid dynamics fascinate me on more than one level.
Well, just as I hit “submit comment,” the realization comes that yall were having this conversation days ago. Blame it on Lingamish’s post today with the hippo and the late link here. Lingamish should be blamed for making little Third Culture Kids too!
Eclexia, thanks for fun post, the wonderful dialog, and now your kind comments to me. So I get this other realization here that “No, I haven’t written any of this online.” TCK dynamics dictate that we don’t share, don’t reveal who we are, don’t jeopardize any of the bridges across vast culture gaps that we’ve found. My wife, a Californian, knows every episode of I Love Lucy and every answer to every pop culture question in Trivial Pursuit (which I avoid unless being asked geography or history or science questions in the game). One of my siblings with spouse has gone off to another land to make more TCKs; my other sib is married here raising Americans. TCKs are chameleons who don’t let their accents show. Yeah, I know I used “yall” above, which only signals I live in Texas now. (This is my 4th U.S. state and 4th nation-state to reside in). I’m just getting a little comfortable with telling the stories.
You say “Third Culture Kid dynamics fascinate me on more than one level.” How do you mean this?
J.K., I don’t ever mind picking a conversation back up 🙂 It’s always a nice surprise to see something I wrote be found again and the dialogue pick back up.
Here are some of the levels where (or maybe it’s why) the dynamics fascinate me:
1. The closet anthropologist in me likes understanding what makes people in different cultures tick. Stories from different cultures fascinate me (there are a lot of different reasons for that, including my personality and my incessant drive to connect with people, which requires understanding. I like understanding similarities and differences between people, because it helps me connect other people who can only conceive of things being one way. But I also just like people’s stories, just because. Biographies are one of my favorite genres, except that many of them aren’t very well written, but even then, I like them. I think maybe you’re the one who introduced me to my most recent favorite biography: Same Kind of Different As Me)
2. My roommate in college grew up overseas as did many of my other friends at that time.
3. Living overseas for several years, my own kids were well on their way to becoming Third Culture Kids. We ended up returning to the U.S. for good when they were all still pretty young, but I still see how that experience overseas shaped my older two children, especially, particularly in their ability to see things from perspectives other than the one that seems exclusively obvious to other people. Granted, that type of thinking also makes life seem unnecessarily complicated at times.
4. I live in an area with many people from other cultures and countries. It is interesting (and often sad) to observe the dynamics and shift in family and culture values when the child is the connection between two vastly different cultures. The most obvious example of this is when a parent is dependent on a very young child to translate. But being the link between spoken communication, I think, is only scratching the surface of all that is implied when a child adapts to and understands a new culture better than the parent.
5. Dave Pollock was a genius. I attended a few of his lectures at a missions conference once. I wish that he had written up some of the specifics from that conference before he died (I’ve seen some of his books, but have never found all of the information he taught). That was many years ago, and only recently I was sharing some of what I learned with a friend whose brother in law is dying from a very quick cancer and the dynamics of it all seem to be devastating the family. I have had many opportunities to remember and apply what I learned about transition and grief in my own life. The things he learned from his study of and work with TCKs have impacted me greatly and left me with a fascination and interest of this unique culture that spans many different cultures.
6. As a person who never really fit into my own culture for a variety of reasons (I am also hopelessly clueless on Trivial Pursuit type of questions as well 🙂 ), learning about TCKs has helped me gain a bit more insight into myself and how I tick, even though I lived in the same small rural community all my growing up years.
Well, if you didn’t believe me when I said “on more than one level”, you’ll probably think twice before asking for that kind of clarification again 🙂 My answers are rarely simple or straightforward.
If you do get comfortable enough to tell your stories online someplace at some time, I’d love to read them, so I hope you’ll come back and let me know that you have written them. I was smiling just from the bit you shared here, picturing you happily eating puppy, but also having commissary heaven there in the background via your military friends.
Well, if you didn’t believe me when I said “on more than one level”, you’ll probably think twice before asking for that kind of clarification again 🙂 My answers are rarely simple or straightforward.
If you do get comfortable enough to tell your stories online someplace at some time, I’d love to read them,
You know, since you’ve visited my blog (yeah, I wrote about meeting the wonderful authors of Same Kind of Different as Me), I absolutely love rare unsimple not straightforward answers!
When too many people were griping about it, I decided to write a bit of self disclosure to get at some of the labels. I’m not trying to be cryptic here but to give a little context; if you scroll down to “I’ve already told you some of my story” you link to a few pages I wrote on being a TCK, in which I tell the story of two of my buddies who took their lives while trying to adjust back into U.S. culture. Sad stuff! There is much joy to write about, but it’s bittersweet.
“There is much joy to write about, but it’s bittersweet.”
I agree with you. In all of life. I read your links. I’m so sorry. But I’m also glad you don’t try to separate the two (joy/bittersweet) out from each other and create a false dichotomy. I confuse people sometimes, and sound like I’m talking out of both sides of my mouth, because I don’t ever really experience one without the other, in this fallen world (and so my verbal responses to my experiences sound contradictory). With every joy, I’m usually also grieving, and with every grief, I usually have some taste of joy and hope. It’s messy, but I don’t feel like I’m lying when I can keep the two contradictory parts of reality together. It’s hard, though, when that’s misunderstood.
Thank you for passing on those links. I appreciate the lack of bitterness and the sound of hope through all the pain, in your “Why….I am a Feminist” post that you linked to above. The bittersweetness speaks to me deeply.