Bologna Wonder Food

My Mom wasn't very adventurous in her cooking (or very good at it either!) and had a repertoire of maybe ten dishes that we consumed ad nauseum. If I lost the calendar I could tell you the day of the week. On Fridays we had Pizza or McDonald's, On Sunday it was some type of roast, On Saturday it some type of Swanson's TV Dinner the latest and greatest culinary invention. During the rest of the week it was some type of casserole or my mom's idea of a nutritious meal: meat, canned vegetables and instant potatoes. One of my mom's favorite meats to serve was Bologna.

I swear my mother thought Bologna was food from the heavens. Somewhere in her kitchen must had been a book titled "1001 Ways to Serve Bologna". I guess Bologna was cheap and a fast meal. We ate it fried, cut up into chunks and sauted with tomato sauce and green peppers, served as hors D'oeuvres: bologna, cheese and crackers, ground into "ground bologna salad" and of course served on wonder bread with mayo and crushed potato chips, we even had a song to sing while eating it!

My bologna has a first name, its O S C A R. My bologna has a second name it s M A Y E R. Oh I love to eat it every day and if you ask me why I’ll say: cause Oscar Mayer has a way with B O L O G N A.

The weird thing is as much as I dislike bologna every once in awhile I have this nostalgic desire to eat it. Last week I was in the meat market and I saw 100 % Beef Bologna and I though about the times I helped my mom grind the Bologna for ground bologna salad and decided I had to have it! I asked them can you please grind it for me and the women said, "yes how much would you like," and I said, "I will take that chunk right there." What I did not realize was it was a three pound chunk! Do you know how much ground Bologna salad you can make with three pounds? Oh, about the size of a small mixing bowl! I ate this stuff all week long and I think I have now fulfilled my desire to ever want to eat this stuff again for the rest of my life!