Even when you plan a vacation with a multi-page itinerary, about 20 different confirmation numbers and notes on which restaurants you don’t want to miss in each area you visit, you sometimes (kind of magically) end up with some free time. And every once in a while, if you’ve been a very good little girl, you’ll luck into something local and fun and free to fill that spare time.
I must’ve been very good this year.
My husband and I recently returned from a pretty epic vacation in Hawaii, which you’ll be hearing lots and lots about in the coming weeks. (Although, if you don’t want to wait that long, you can get a preview of some of the goodies I’m going to cover by checking out the Fit Bottomed Eats Instagram feed. Be warned — it might make you hungry!)
Anyway, Oahu was the last island of our trip, and we were only there for a couple of nights. We knew of a couple of restaurants we wanted to check out, but kept seeing signs for a street festival — a Spam street festival — everywhere we went. While we were doing a little shopping for friends back home, one of the clerks asked if we were hitting Spam Jam the following night. “Eh,” I said, explaining that I didn’t eat meat and we weren’t sure we were so into Spam.
“Dude, no,” he said. “It’s got, like, all these bands! And tons of food! It’s amazing. You’ve gotta go!”
Well, what were we going to say to that? No? Please. And so, our plans for the final night of our Hawaiian vacation were set: Spam Jam it was.
First things first: We came up with a theme song for the evening. “Spam Jam! Spam Jam! In your mouth! Or in a can!” to the tune of the “Wayne’s World” theme song, in case you wondered. Then, we began to take in our surroundings.
There was Spam everywhere. There was Spam everything. Spam pizza. Spam burgers. Spam stir-fry. Spam sundaes. A wave made of Spam. Dogs (multiple dogs) dressed in Spam costumes. People in Spam costumes. Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam!
Although my pescatarian tendencies precluded me from sampling any Spam snacks, Jared was game, giving Spam a try in a couple of different fried ways. “It’s pretty good,” was his review. “Tastes meaty. Kind of like breakfast sausage.”
I can honestly say there was something for everybody at Spam Jam. Especially if you like Spam, but even if you didn’t, you weren’t left out.
Happily, there were also Spam-free foods available, so I snacked on a pineapple-vanilla popsicle (yum!), sampled some coconut peanut butter (more on that soon!) and watched the pretty incredible hula show by Germaine’s Luau (we’d skipped out on all the luaus at our hotels because, well, we just had so many other places we wanted to eat, but this way we got the part we really wanted — the show — without trying to eat our money’s worth of pork and poi). And aside from that, we people watched, and aside from the food, isn’t that the best part of a street festival anyway?
Have you ever had Spam? Been lucky enough to crash Spam Jam? —Kristen