Officially the US is in a recession, which is good news for gas prices (crude oil futures are now below $50 a barrel so the current prices of $1.60 to $1.90 a gallon are likely to get lower still - and it only costs $25 to fill the car up at the moment!). According to the Houston Chronicle, sales of Kraft Macaroni & Cheese rose 9.6% from last year. This dish was invented during the Great Depression of the 1930s because it was cheap and easy to make (and didn’t require hard to get meat). Talking of meat, Hormel Foods of Minnesota have added more shifts in an effort to keep up with demand for Spam. Spam is another foodstuff that originated during the Great Depression. Spam was originally known as Hormel Spiced Ham but was renamed later to help boost sales. Perhaps it was a bad choice of name because there have been many joke names since (such as “Something Posing As Meat”). For those who like Spam so much they’d like to make it at home just combine chopped pork, shoulder meat, ham meat, salt, water, suger and sodium nitrite. Mmmmm. Anyway, more importantly, Spam features in a classic Monty Python sketch (from Series 2, episode 12, December 1970), and by the miracle of YouTube here it is:

Now if you watch carefully you will see the Hungarian (John Cleese) from the even more classic (in my opinion) sketch from the same show, Dirty Hungarian Phrasebook. Here’s that one:

My nipples explode with delight...