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Mon­day August 8 is the Sec­ond Annu­al L&L Hawaiʻi Nation­al Spam Musubi Day, and that means a free musubi from L&L Hawaiʻi. Launched by the ven­er­a­ble Hawaiʻi com­pa­ny and licensed by Hormel Foods, this it-should-be-a-hol­i­day is anoth­er quirky and fun Hawaiʻi thing. 

And because I love both spam and his­to­ry, letʻs have a lit­tle of both in todayʻs blog post. 

Spam musubi  is sticky white rice topped with a slice of sea­soned cooked spam, wrapped up in a piece of crunchy nori sea­weed. In my post on 12 Things Native Hawai­ian and Hawaiʻi Kids Like, — my addi­tion to chil­dren’s author Tara Lazar’s 500+ Things That Kids Like — spam musubi is right there near the top of the list. Thatʻs because itʻs a con­ve­nient, inex­pen­sive, pack­able lunch. 

Canned spam first became pop­u­lar in Hawaiʻi dur­ing WW II. Soon home cooks were cre­at­ing dish­es made from the salty canned meat. When I was grow­ing up, we ate spam all the time, includ­ing fried with eggs and rice (which is a favorite break­fast order at Hawaiʻi McDon­alds restau­rants.) The first time my col­lege room­mates saw me fry­ing up spam, they freaked out, that is, until they tast­ed it. 

Hawaiʻiʻs Bar­bara Funa­mu­ra is cred­it­ed with invent­ing spam musubi in the ear­ly 1980s for the Joni-Hana restau­rant on Kauaiʻi, accord­ing to the Gar­den Island news­pa­per. Mrs. Funa­mu­ra had no idea that her hum­ble recipe would, like many great inven­tions, become so popular.

My kids grew up pack­ing spam musubis to eat after hula and soc­cer prac­tice, and to this day, itʻs a sat­is­fy­ing treat. Our sim­ple method was sim­ply splash­ing a bit of shoyu into the pan as the spam cooked, but a search on the inter­net reveals lots of fan­cy recipes.

Oh, and did you get the August 8/8–08 shout-out to our area code? Hap­py Spam Musubi day! Pho­to cred­it: L&L Hawai­ian BBQ