Happy Chusok! Here’s your SPAM
From the Strib:
It’s the only tinned meat with its own museum. And it’s got its own Christmas collectible from Department 56, the Minnesota-based maker of holiday villages and seasonal doodads. So is it really that much of a stretch to believe that Spam, so often the subject of ridicule in the United States, is considered an upscale delicacy in South Korea? Far from the prairies surrounding its southern Minnesota producer, Hormel Foods Corp., the spiced pork shoulder byproduct is considered a proper and lovely holiday gift. Around Korean holidays, like the recent Chusok holiday, the blue-and-yellow cans show up in better stores, often wrapped in boxed sets.
It goes on to say that Chusok is the Korean equivalent of Thanksgiving, and an estimated 8 million cans of Spam change hands annually there. That sure beats turkey, and I bet Korean newspapers don’t run lame stories about tryphtophan-laden Thanksgiving meals.
Do Minnesotans as a whole have any strange Thanksgiving habits (apart from Spam, of course)?
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Other than the conspicuous hotdish and occasional Jell-O mold, I’d say Minnesotans have a pretty typical Norman Rockwell Thanksgiving.
That is: we stuff ourselves silly.