The Great Spam vs. Treet Taste Test & Bev BD

I’ve posted before that my mom bought Armor’s Treet rather Hormel’s Spam to feed us kids and I have no idea why other than it may have been a few cents cheaper.  Not long after that post early last year, I bought a can of each for a taste test and I finally got around to doing it after discovering the two cans while organizing the pantry - you know I love taste tests.

Before the taste test, let’s look at the ingredients:

Spam: a mixture of pork and ham meat, salt, water, potato starch, sugar, and sodium nitrite

Treet: mechanically separated chicken, water, pork, salt, sugar, corn syrup. Contains 2% or less of: modified corn starch, brown sugar, hydrolyzed corn, soy and wheat gluten proteins, canola oil, smoke flavored barley malt flour, sodium erythorbate, natural flavors, sodium nitrite, sodium tripolyphosphate.

A pretty big difference.

Next I cut a slice of each for a right-out-of-the-can taste but first I noticed that the Treet was a good bit darker in color ten I had a bite.

The first thing to hit me was the salt level in both but I couldn’t tell much difference in their actual taste - my taster may not be refined enough.

Next, I fried those two pieces in a neutral oil, tasted and once again, not a discernable difference – but still very salty - the Treet got much darker.

I had fried some cod the previous evening and still had leftover batter so I cooked a slice of each in it with the same taste results as previously.

Then, I topped them each with an unsalted egg and spread the yolks around making the meat taste a little less salty but still too much – this is from a guy that is a heavy salter.

And last but not least, I had some boiled potatoes left from the previous nights supper with Eric (son, who picked up the Honda Insight that we gave to grandson, Matthew) so I diced them and the remaining Treet and Spam, fried it as hash, and topped with unsalted fried eggs (forgot the pics).  This combination was much better but I had to have a piece of potato and meat in a bite or it was still salty.

No offense to you Spam/Treet lovers out there, but I’ve now been-there-done-that and won’t need to try either again which works fine as I can stick with the Kentucky Legend Ham that I really like.

Bev BD

I had mentioned several times that Bev and Pat were spending a couple weeks on the Island of Saint Marten/Sint Maarten and while there she celebrated a major BD.  While I wasn’t with her, I know she didn’t miss me as son Rhett was there for a week and helped her enjoy the day.

They took a tour around the island and one stop was a selfie place where she participated.

I know she had a very good time but I’m sure looking forward to her being back home.  

I can't seem to fix the white highlighting of the verbiage.

Photos can be enlarged by clicking on them and the blue words are links.

Have a great day and thanks for stopping by Almost Heaven South.

Larry

04/22-23/23 meal dates