Spam and the jolly Green Giant

Weird signs of the day in Minnesota:  "Toward Zero Deaths, Safety Corridor" followed by "Concentrate on Driving" How does one go toward zero deaths? I don't think it is a mathematical possibility to go toward zero anything and we are so busy concentrating on this philosophical quandary that we cannot concentrate on driving. The signs cancel each other out.


Speaking of Minnesota, we went through the city of Minnetonka today, which made me wonder if that's where Tonka Toys come from, so I looked it up on the Google and no they do not.  Tonka Toys started out as Mound Metal Craft in Mound Minnesota, right next door to Minnetonka and Lake Minnetonka which is where they got the name.  The company started out with the intent to make steel garden implements but got sidetracked. 


This is all from Wikipedia, with whom I have a love/hate relationship. I love them because they are laid out in such a way that is very readable and informative and I hate them because they are so easy to use that it makes me too lazy sometimes to verify and it can be changed at any time by any body.  I firmly believe in the Trust but Verify model of internet searching but sometimes it's a pain to verify. I am a skeptic by nature and with all this information available at my fingertips, I don't want to fall into the trap of believing the first thing I read on the Internet. There is a website for every thing under and on the sun, all with varying levels of factness.


Back to Minnesota. Once again we will be close to the Spam Museum with no time to stop there, what a shame.  Located in Austin, MN the museum features 16,500 square feet of SPAM® artifacts, history and fun—and all for free! Yes, that’s right— it’s free admission to check out vintage advertising, answer SPAM® trivia, try your hand at canning SPAM® products, stock up on collectible SPAM® memorabilia, and learn about all the SPAM® products, even the hard-to-find varieties. I stole this right off the Spam website so it has to be true.

Did you know that sodium nitrite is what makes Spam pink? They say that if it wasn't used in pork products like Spam, bacon, ham, etc. the meat would be gray. I don't know about you, but I like my gelatinous cube of meat pink, thank you very much! 

They are crazy for Spam in Hawaii and even have a Spam festival there and Burger King and McDonald's both offer it on their menus. Lots of places make Spam sushi. There are even theories about why it's so popular in the south pacific having to do with cannibalism and it tasting like flesh but it's not true. Much.


One thing we have done in Minnesota was to take our picture next to the Jolly Green Giant and his buddy Sprout in Blue Earth, MN.  We had dinner there once, right next door to the JGG himself. 


According the Blue Earth chamber of commerce the city got its name from the Blue Earth River that circles the town.  The river was named for a blue clay that is found high in it’s banks.  The Native Americans of this area, which were the Mdewakanton Tribe of the Dakota Nation, called the blue clay “mah-ko-tah” or “mah-kah-to."


I wonder what the Native American word is for Spam?