SPAM; ‘mystery meat’, ‘spiced ham’, ‘shoulders of pork and ham’, ‘special processed American meat’… we really don’t know exactly what the acronym stands for, but we do know that it’s a strange meat in a can with a key attached.  It’s almost fun to open it and just as much fun to get it out of the can without disturbing the shape it acquired in packing.  Technically, it is a canned, precooked meat product made from chopped pork shoulder meat with ham meat added.  Of course it has salt, and lots of it, as well as a potato starch binder, along with sugar and preservatives.  Yum Yum!   It was 1891 when George A. Hormel established today’s Hormel Foods Corporation in Austin, Minnesota, back then it was known as Geo. A. Hormel & Co.  The motto coined by the company was “originate, don’t imitate” and I would say they achieved that with SPAM.  In 1926, Hormel developed the world’s first canned ham.  The next year George Hormel retired from handling day-to-day operations and named his son, Jay C. Hormel as Acting President and by 1928 they had become a public company.   Jay C. Hormel was an aggressive thinker and under his leadership new products were developed such as Dinty Moore Beef Stew and Hormel Chili.  But the biggie came in 1937 with the invention of SPAM.  Acting on the motto “originate, don’t imitate”, in 1949 the Hormel Girls,..

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