Friday, March 06, 2015

BBQ Baloney Sandwich? Really?

Okay, I'll admit it up front. I really do not like baloney -- or, to use its proper, high-falutin' name, "bologna". When I was a kid growing up on the farm, we would occasionally take day trips to visit my cousins in Sapulpa (yes, that's really a place) or my great-uncle in Okay (yes, that's Okay OK, really another place), and we would have to make it a fast trip. Those cows, as much as we might have wanted them to, wouldn't milk themselves.

And those fast road trips meant that we had to eat our food on the run. This was a million years ago, before there were McDonald's, before there were Subways on every corner, even before there were Oklahoma-born Sonic drive-ins. This meant that we had to get food that was fast and easy to put together and eat while you were driving. This meant, sad to say, baloney and Wonder bread. The recipe? Take a slice of bread, slap a piece of baloney on it, fold it over and there you go. Mustard?  Forget it. Mayonnaise? What's that?

A couple of years ago I was at my local deli/prepared-meat counter getting some corned beef for sandwiches and I noticed that they had a big log of baloney. Something reached out to me across all those years and I found myself wondering if it was really as bad as I remembered -- you know, tastes change, etc. Long story short, I got three slices of their "premium" exotic-brand (and expensive, so you know it must be good) "bologna" and took them home.

I managed to get one slice down, and the other two went to my crows. Yes, it was as awful as I remembered it being. Worse, actually.

So. Fast-forward to yesterday. I was watching one of the "Food Porn" shows on the Travel Channel, and they were making visits to various "pigout" restaurants around the USA, one of which was the Cozy Corner Cafe in Memphis, where they are proud -- proud! -- to serve a barbecued boloney sandwich!

OMFG.

2 Comments:

evodevo said...

Hey ! Fried baloney! the national sandwich of the former Confederacy... along with, wait for it, "potted meat", Moon pies and RC Cola. I moved to Ky in the 50's and could not believe the crap they ate. Oh, well...

Farnsworth68 said...

I know, right? Of course I'm one to talk, what with all the pork rinds, pickled pig's feet and Spam.
But at least that isn't baloney.
I'm reminded of the old saying, no matter how thin you slice it, it's still baloney...