SPAM Will Survive the Apocalypse with Dr. Joanne Rondilla

island territory about fifteen hundred miles from the Philippines. Guam is regularly hit with typhoons that knock out electricity on the whole island, So Joanne knows the importance of a food that knows how to survive. The few remaining survivors are gonna live and repopulate the world on cans of spam and coined beef in Vienna sausage because that is what the gods intended. Oh my God, that's the lesson we're supposed to learn, right. I was like, my spirit

chose this moment for a reason. Yeah, no, I think so, man like, because you know, like with the fires, with all the rolling blackouts and people are like, oh my god, I lost power, and I'm like, welcome to Guam every year, bitch, Like you know. My friendship with Joanne started about six years ago with an angry Facebook message. Now, she wasn't angry at me. She was angry because I was the only fat person who had entered to be a model for this body positive fashion show and I didn't get chosen.

The whole search had been very publicized online and Joanne was following the whole process. She took my rejection really personally. Her Facebook message detailed all the ways that she felt I had been robbed. I knew we were going to be friends when she said she would have picked me hands down, no question. As a Taurus, I really appreciate when someone expresses unconditional loyalty before I've even met them.

One of the beautiful things about being Joanne's friend is that she's always cooking delicious Filipino food and sharing it. Before we talked, we each ordered one of her favorite snacks and mine too, A small rectangular pillow made up of a chubby layer of spam on top of white rice and delicately wrapped in seaweed. It's called spam musubi. Do you have your spam musubie? Of course I came ready.

I went and picked up some spam Moozubie. I have a spot down the street from where I live where they serve spam moosubi from like seven am to one thirty pm. I can just get a latte. It's like a slightly quote unquote what one might call like an elevated item or something like that. But they capture the spirit. But there's another point to be made that the spirit of spam cannot be contained, right, it cannot be domesticated. So like whatever you're gonna be doing, like it's gonna

shine and it's gonna be its true authentic self. Yes, yes, I'm excited. So I put mine on a pink plate and it's just so cute because it's like in conversation with the spam. I just love a color story, you know. Um, okay, cute, all right, So I'm gonna I also have a little dipping sauce that they included, So I'm excited about my

spicy dipping sauce. I have a dipping sauce too, so I cheated and had some last night, and I think it's like you cannot put a plate of spam in front of me and not like and have me not eat get like fresh money, right, yes, yes, yes, are you ready? Yes? Okay, three, two, one, okay bite m mm hmmmmmmm wow yeah mine. They put like a fried egg in m hmmm, which is so good. So there's like that kind of gummy sort of like yolk, like

that kind of creamy yolke and it's just working all together. Yeah, whoa. You may not always love spam, but you know it spam doesn't care because its always going to look be back. Tell me about like spam within the story of like growing up on Guam. I feel like everybody eats spam on Guam and so you know, people buy it by you know, the case Massubie, I think is fairly new because like growing up, I did not actually eat massubi. I ate a lot of like spam, rice and spam

and eggs. So yeah, like it's just I think that spam on Guam has this it's survival food. But I think that it's also associated, you know with like American colonialism and American militarism, and I think a lot of like like a lot of Filipinos, a lot of Pacific Islanders. We get demonized for our love for spam. You know, we took this food that four Americans was this rejected food, and we turned it into something that you know, it

is palatable and you know, like enjoyable to eat. So like, I think it's important to like, um, you know, like to be open minded about food. And the way we open our minds about food is to really you know, understand like the significance of this food. Spam was born in nineteen thirty seven in a little town called Austin, Minnesota, the home of Hormel Foods Corporation. The people who bought

us Denttymore beef stew and Skippy peanut butter. It was the Great Depression and people wanted cheap, easy access to protein. Back then, pork shoulder, the main ingredient in spam, was an unpopular and cheap cut of meat. Spam got its name during a New Year's Eve party when Hormel CEO had a naming contest and an employee entered spam maybe a combo of the word spice and ham. He won

the contest, and one hundred dollars. The canned meat wasn't particularly popular though, until World War Two, and this leads us to how spam ended up on Guam. Short answer about four hundred years of military occupation. I told you everything ties back to colonialism. Guam went from Spanish occupation in the sixteen hundreds, to US occupation in the eighteen hundreds, to Japanese occupation, and then back to US occupation in

the nineteen forties. During World War Two, the US military sent one hundred million pounds of spam to Guam to feed soldiers. Think about it. They were small, cheap, non perishable protein bombs that could stand tropical heat without spoiling. Pretty much the perfect food. Some of the cans made their way from the soldiers to locals and Guamanians known as tamotos. Elevated spam from something that the soldiers had written thousands of complaint letters about to something fried, flavored

and delicious. Yeah. So, you know, growing up Filipino, especially like growing up this island style Filipino, right, Fluid is the language of love. It's how we show love and care, It's how we show connection, you know. But but being Filipino, especially like my mom's side of a family in particular, like they're all beauty queens. They all like, you know,

like take pride in being beautiful. And so when you're like the fat, dark skinned, ugly daughter of like this lineage, you know, it becomes really you know, like you learn your value very quickly, you know. I remember being a kid and being a fairly you know, like happy, go

lucky kid. But then when we went to the Philippines, I think I was about seven years old, and like I was always picked on in my family, and I assumed it was because I was the youngest, and so I was so excited to go to the Philippines because I had a cousin there who was younger than me.

Well we go and no one picks on her, and you know, like a lot of the you know, like the name calling, the teasing, it continues, and I feel like a lot of it was because I was the dark kid, because I i you know, like I was the fat kid, right, So like I learned very quickly that oh okay, there was something else wrong with me,

because it wasn't my age anymore. Right, So I remember that trip being the trip where I understood I understood my lack of value in the family, and like it's funny because recently my mom was, you know, like she

was sharing this memory with me from that trip. She was saying that, like, one day I was playing with that cousin and like my mom and her brother, which is my cousin's dad, we're watching us, and my uncle just flat out told my mom, he goes, your daughter is so ugly, like like look at her, like look at her next to my daughter, like, you know, and my mom was telling me the story, and my mom was saying that, um, you know, she she was so like taking it back. She didn't know what to say,

so she didn't say anything. And I get it, like she's just sort of shocked. But like what that's what the seven year old me needed was hard to defend me? Right, Like for me, I'm sure I took her silence as agreement, like you agree. You know. It's like you, my mother, the person who's supposed to love me unconditionally, you agree

with my uncle who just called me like disgustingly ugly. Yeah, I'm just thinking about like relating to that so deeply and how I mean because I had I remember the first time that I went to Mexico with my grandmother. And this was a big deal, right, I mean I went a bunch as an infant, and then I didn't go at all until again until I was sixteen years old.

And it was a big deal. And I was going with my grandma for a month that she was going to kind of it was like the pilgrimage to like where I come from, you know, and to show me that place and you know, at home, you know, in California, she was always so sweet and kind. She always she constantly gave me compliment. She always told me how beautiful and special I was. And then in Mexico she started

to go. She started to she code switched into the femininity that is expected in her family, which is to insult your child. It felt like this extraordinary moment of betrayal that was like out of nowhere was she calling me ugly. We had an aunt that would visit us.

This aunt is from like the beautiful side of the family, and you know, like she during one of her visits, you know, me, my auntie and my mom, like we're all chatting and my auntie goes, you know that my nickname is Joy, she goes, you know, Joy you have the same smile as your cousin Chacha, which is, you know, part of the beautiful cousins. And I was like, oh,

you know, that's an interesting observation. And my mom immediately cuts my auntie off and like, I don't understand tagalog, but when shit is being talked about me, I'm hella fluent, right, And immediately my mom like cuts in and she goes, don't do that. Don't tell my daughter that she's beautiful. Don't tell my daughter that she looks like her cousin. She goes, you and I both know that chat is a much more beautiful woman. Don't don't don't say that

to my daughter. And my aunt is just sort of like I can't build like she they don't say anything to my mom because again it's that that shock, right, that's silence, right, But she I can see in her face she's just like I don't even know what to say, right, like this is you don't say that, but you know, like she's just like I don't know what to say, and like and she's looking at me and I'm just like,

you know, I motioned her. I'm like there's nothing to say, like this is just you know, like this is what happens. Every generation of women is taught what we've got to do to be considered a good woman. Some ever present lessons in femininity might be remembered to sit with your legs closed, or the way to a man's heart is through his stomach, or always order the salad. Women learn these lessons in childhood and pass them onto their own children.

Teaching your child how to perform gender correctly is part of what turns a so called good woman into a quote unquote good mother. Though some of these gender lessons have been around for decades, many rules of femininity change from one generation to the next, especially in immigrant families. That change can create major tension with our mothers and our grandmothers. Take my grandmother for example, she was born

around the same time spam was the thirties. In Mexico, where she grew up, women wouldn't have the right to vote for another twenty years. Because she was raised during a time when women didn't have the right to be financially independent. She sees marriage as part of a woman's survival. She saw me as a beautiful person, but she knew as a fat woman like her, I would have fewer romantic choices, and in her mind that meant my survival

was at risk. So in part that experience we had in Mexico was her attempt to show me that this is how women and fat women like us especially act in order to get the things we need the most. In some cultures, part of being a good mother is

teaching your child that they're gifted, gorgeous, and special. In other cultures, part of being a good mother is teaching her child to be humble, not stand out, and preparing her to walk into an at times harsh world and not have her ass handed to her by a complete stranger. I'm not saying it's as simple as that. Our mothers are all just passing on their idea of how to succeed in the world. I think Joanne's mom and my

grandmother incorrectly thought of us as extensions of themselves. A lot of lessons in femininity actually have to do with food, both eating and cooking. In a patriarchal culture like ours, preparing food is seen as care work, so cooking sits squarely on the shoulders of women. For my grandmother, the kitchen was her domain. She is the queen of Thamalis. If anti lavas were an Olympic category, she would win a gold medal and no one can touch her manudle.

She's fluent in the language a flavor, and she kills it on deliciousness one hundred percent of the time. The kitchen is a place where a woman like my grandmother can safely be truly excellent, be a genius, be a master, be the best, all while being non threatening in a patriarchal culture that is hell bent on making her feel like a second class citizen. Because cooking is so gendered, this means that some women are going to have a

lot of ownership feelings about it. In a culture like ours, not a lot of things offer my grandmother that same overwhelming sense of gratification, return on investment, and power. She guards it fiercely, even from her favorite grandchild, Me and Joanne has a similar dynamic with her mom, who's a

powerhouse in the kitchen. Joanne told me she's been asking her mom for some of her recipes for years, and for years her mom has been dodging her until one day Joanne and her sister were helping her mom clear out the attic and and I found it, said, I found this thing and said nineteen eighty nine appointment book and I'm like, why does my mom have her calendar

from nineteen eighty nine. I opened it, boom, the treasure trove, her recipe for puto, her recipe for yes, Yes, yes, And I know it's legit because the appointment book says nineteen eighty nine. Yes. I brought her. I was like, Mom, look what I have. And she's like, oh, yeah, just you know, she goes, I don't know if the recipes are right. I'm like, mmm, I was like, yes, insisting on deflection. I love it. I don't know, I don't know if it's I don't know if it's right. Yeah.

I was like, I was like, you're in trouble, mom, because you know how I am in the kitchen. You're afraid I'm going to cook better than you. But I just I told her, I go when I make this boot though, and it's better than yours, I just don't feel bad. Just be proud that I could pick up the skill. Right as you were talking, I was thinking about my uh sort of similar levels of sabotage. Um,

like my grandmother, uh, you know, like raised me. She was the she was like the mother of the household, and uh, you know, she was very territorial about cooking um, and she still is because that's like her thing, Like she excels at that thing. And it's definitely connected to like the womanly art of cooking. My desire to learn how to cook the food that she made. I think she interpreted it as me trying to take her crown. And I think she took so much pride, like, for example,

when she married my grandfather. Before that, my grandfather had been he grew up, he grew up fat and a way of dealing when fat phobia for him was becoming like a bodybuilder, and so he was like a competitive bodybuilder in his late teens early twenties before he got married to my grandmother. And my grandmother speaks with pride about making him fat again, like you know, and enticing

him with her irresistible food. And I don't know, like it's just interesting because like I really I really wanted to be able to make what she made. And I remember moments in the kitchen where I, you know, I'd be like, Okay, can you show me how to make that? And it was kind of like trying to get it was like trying to get secrets out of a spy where I felt like she would actively like do weird things and like turn away or ask me to go get something, and then she'd do something secretly while I

was looking the other way. I just felt like he did not want me to have this thing. And I've just been relating to the story of like this this hidden nineteen eighty nine archive. It's just so it's like so strange and also so beautiful. I don't know, yeah, no, I think so. I think it's a little bit about that,

like she doesn't want her crown being taken away. But I think also too, like she grew up like with maids and like cooks, you know, because like you can be middle class and have that in the Philippines and so like you know, immigrating and like having to work and you know, like developing this sense of independence. Part of that was learning to cook. And so I think part of it is like she earned her recipes, you know, like she earned her her way of cooking because it

wasn't something that came naturally. And so I think part of the reason she's having me like earned the recipes is because she had to earn them. So I can definitely see some of that happening, because yeah, like the first recipe I conquered I tried to like replicate was impanada. And my mom was known for the maticulous way that she would wrap each individual impanada in this wax paper and she put it on like the cardboard trade that used to hold like soda, you know what I mean.

Like yeah, yeah, it's like it was just like this really beautiful thing. And like this is a few years ago. She finally gave me the recipe. She holds up this piece of paper to my face and she goes like this exact, exact exact like this. Okay, Yeah, I look at it, and I'm like these it doesn't I can tell it. I was like, this does not look right, Like this is way too dry, and she's like, no,

exact exact like this. I'm like okay. So like and you know, I was making it for New Year's Day and my sister and I are tinkering with it, like we do the exact measurements, and yeah, it's like super dry. It's crumbly, it doesn't hold together. And I was like Mom's holding out, man. So like we tinker with it and we get it to like the consistency, and we

make it. And like my mom, you know, was feeling ill, so she couldn't go to my aunties party, which is where we always have New Year's Day, but like I saved some pieces for her. And after we left my aunts, I went to my mom's and like, you know, so I give her the impanada and she's like, oh, how right, she goes did they eat it? Did they like it? I said, she's awaiting, she's a waiting for the disaster. And I was like, yeah, they ate it, like there was no impanada left. I go, but here's you know,

we saved you some. And then she's like shocked, right, And I'm pretty sure she knew she didn't give the right recipe, so she takes a biden to it. She's like and she just you know, like tosses it to the side of the table and I'm like and I looked at her and I was like, mom, you know this is good. I'm like, you know, this is delicious, Like don't take this away from me. Yes, Oh my god. That reminds me. So that's like literally like I feel like step first step some version I may have this,

like I remember one. And one of the things that like is a big thing in my relationship to my family is like the ritual of I would make a dish or I would bring a dish from a restaurant that I liked to in order to kind of share this food experience with my family. And my grandmother is like the royal taster, right, she has to have the first taste, you know, she has to be the gatekeeper of it. And I have literally seen um, my grandmother like spit out food that i've she's and she is

a pretty reserved one. Like she's a woman who like sort of was raised is like a little bit of like a Northern Mexican debutante. Um. So like the idea of spitting out food is like unthinkable, right, but like she I mean literally remember one time I made these like rose truffles and she fully, like dramatically and enthusiastically spitted out and I just I just knew that it was like about just being like, you think you're hot shit, but you can't touch may enchiladas with your fancy ass

little rose truffle, So don't try. So this truffle, it's actually a story about something much much bigger. We'll talk about that after the break. We've been taught that power is a zero sum game. You only get power because someone else loses power. For women, we are often competing against other women, sometimes women we love deeply. We become competitors rather than collaborators because we haven't imagined a world

where there's more than enough to go around. In the absence of that beautiful world, we create the fantasy of one perfect woman, the one who wins in every category. In fact, all of us are actually already her, and none of us will ever be her. Patriarchy pits women against one another for the title of queen, a crown which can theoretically only be worn by one person. I think it's easy to say that my grandma was being mean because she saw my innocent attempt at cooking as

a threat to her kitchen kingdom. But it's harder to admit that I was equally coming for her that day. We were both vying for the ridiculous, toxic crown. What's more, my grandmother's spit take was also about checking my snobbery.

Here's my grandmother, the matriarch of the family, a woman with a third grade education who speaks two languages, who married a loyal man who worked his ass off his whole life to bring home the bacon, A god fearing woman who raised kids and grandkids and still had the time to put her hair up in pincurls every damn night.

And here I am, fresh from college, high on my ability to reference Carl Marx, a no at all feminist, but also a heartbroken girl who couldn't understand why my grandmother hadn't stood up to my grandfather's verbal abuse or protected me from my mother's emotional volatility. I was ready to take my revenge by attempting to beat her at a game I didn't think she could play in her most prized domain, the kitchen. I didn't grow up eating

dark chocolate or rose flavored anything. She didn't prepare those things because neither I nor any other member of the Tobar family would have eaten them. I developed a taste for them after I'd moved away from home. In Berkeley's slow food movement and gourmet culture, these flavors are considered complex and sophisticated. Let's be real. One might taste of really oaky wine, or a super bright coffee, or a very dark chocolate for the first time, and honestly think

this is kind of gross. Gourmet culture takes the foods that invoke that reaction and then uses one's ability to appreciate them as a sign of superior taste. That's classism, but it's also got roots in racism. And my grandmother wasn't having it. She was saying, no matter how fancy you become, I will always be the woman who raised you. Don't try to come in this house and show me up. Hell yeah to her setting that boundary with me, and

also hell yeah, I'd hurt my feelings. As rebel eaters, I think we have to recognize the ways that systems like patriarchy use food to separate us, whether it's through diet culture or gourmet culture. As rebel eaters, we can recognize these games we play with food, and that gives us a shot at smashing that crown that my grandmother and I were struggling over, and in its place we can grow something new. You are married to a foodie,

a lover of food. I mean, one of the things I love is I've always loved watching the two of you interact around food, because you guys are so cute it's like clearly like a love like a very clear love language. And I'm kind of like, you know what, what's it like being married to a foodie? So the fellow booty. So the funny thing is when we first dated, Jose was not a foodie at all, Like really, oh my gosh, oh this was I could tell you Jose's

daily what he would eat daily. He would have a morning shake and then he'd go to work and like have Mexican food always like a burrito or something, and that's like his big meal, his one big meal a day. And then he'd go home and for dinner he'd have a protein shake. So when we first started dating and I would like sleepover Virgie, there was like water in the fridge and milk in the ridge and nothing else. And I can't I'm not a smoothie person, Like I need food in real food. Like so yes, the one

thing that I that I regret. So Jose's mom passed in twenty twelve, just before I left for Arizona. I was a lecturer at Arizona State and like the one thing I never got to do was like cook with her and like you know, figure out like recipes, you know, that that he really liked. And when I came back for one of the breaks, we were watching a movie and you know, like of course, like before the movie ends, I take up my yell pap and I look at, okay, what are we going to eat after it? Right? And

there happened to be a Guatemalan restaurant sorted walking distance. Um, you know from the theater the season He's Guatemalan. Yeah, yeah, And they served pepion and I know that pepion is his favorite dish. It's the one thing like on his birthday he would always ask his mom or his ought to make. And it's like it's like pumpkin seed and chile and like you know, slow cooked pork. I remember, we're in this restaurant he had peppion. He started getting

emotional because you know, it sparks this memory. And I don't think he had processed the passing of his mother until that moment. And I thought, oh my god, like it hit me how how much it sucked that I didn't get to learn this recipe. And so when I went back to Arizona, I started scouring the internet and so I found this recipe. I made it for him, and like you know, it's it's never gonna be like

his mother's. But I think he was just really touched that it was close, and like I did that, you know, like I tried to replicate something that meant so much, because yeah, like that's how food is the love language.

When I was single, my ultimate litmus test was like, if I can't bring you to a family party to enjoy our food, I can't bring you into the family, Like I just I can't because this is our love language, and like it's so hard to genuinely be a part of like our family if you don't eat the food, right what you said about him getting emotional with this dish and sort of like that being maybe an entry point of really processing his feelings about the loss of

his mother. And it makes complete sense that if all you're eating is like a protein cheek and food that you didn't grow up eating, that that wouldn't that, you know, you could have these unexamined feelings because like food is that is that like it's I don't know, it's like that evocative, immediate that like emotion is connected to it. I hear this a lot in like these diets, sort of like you know, circles where it's like food is fuel.

Food is fuel, and it's like food isn't just fuel, like it's it's it's history, it's the story of your of your family and your people. It's it's like it's not fuel, it's like heart and soul, spiritual like nourishment. And when you lack that, you lack the nourishment that

you need to continue going. Right. I used to teach a class on food and culture in Arizona State, and like I would talk about hands and I would tell my students, like look at your hands, and I go, you know, I Filipinos we eat with our hands because there's something intimate about like eating with your hands. Your your relationship to your food isn't muddled by like a utensil. It's that like you know, you have to you know, like when you eat with your hands, you feel the food,

you touch the food. You it sparks this intimate relationship with your food, you know. And I tell my students, like, you really have to understand the importance of hands because I want you to reflect on the hands that created the food, who made the food, think about the hands that picked the food, right, you know, So like food isn't just fuel. It's about like how we connect to each other. You know, food is politics, right, especially like in the pandemic, I've been thinking a lot about like

essential workers, farm workers, and of course like nurses. A large percentage of nurses here in the Bay Area are Filipino, right, So, like I've loved the way in which Filipino restaurant owners have gotten together and like you know, they make food,

and like they send it to the hospitals. I feel like they do that because they're reminded of the fact that so many of the nurses and like hospital workers are Filipino themselves, and in order to function and to help other people breathe, this is a community that needs to eat food that is familiar and comfortable to them. Right. So it's like, I feel like how we understand nourishment also, how we understand the way in which we feed people is connected to how we like, you know, fundamentally take

care of people. Yeah, Joe, and thank you so much for being on Rebel Eaters Club. Thank you. I so loved being here. And of course you know, ver j I love hanging out with you. And when we are able to, we shall have an incredible meal at prebet you yes and yeah. And also we have a dining table at our new apartment, so like you will come over and I will cook lovely, lovely Islander Filipino food and we shall feast over the different ways in which

I can handle a can of spam. Don't forget to head to Rebel Eatersclub dot com for this week's journal prompt. We also have brand new badges for this season and advice on starting your own Rebel Eaters Club courtesy of the babes of the Wesleyan University Rebel Eaters Club. We're taking next week off, so look out for our next episode in two weeks. In the meantime, revisit season one and check out Snacks and Recaps on my Instagram live, a series I've been doing to recap Rebel Eaters Club

episodes with the rest of the podcast team. I'm at Virgie Tovar on Instagram and Snacks and Recaps is every Wednesday at twelve pm Pacific. Rebel Eaters Club is produced by Transmitter Media. Our lead producer is Jordan Bailey. Lacy Roberts is our managing producer. Sarah knix edits the show and Our executive producer is Greta Khane and I'm your

host Virgie Tovar. Ben Shano is our mix engineer. Special kudos to James T. Green, Jessica Glazer, and Mitchell Johnson for the production assist and Taka Yasuzawa, who wrote some of the music we use in the show. If you love Rebel Eaters Club, tell your friends and share the love by writing a review on your favorite podcast app. See you next week. M