I recently joined a friend for lunch at a local diner. As I perused the menu for something to accommodate my vegetarian diet, my friend sang out, “Fried bologna. What’s that?”
His rhetorical question hit the right ears. Fried bologna! I hadn’t heard those two words in years. And I hadn’t tasted it since I was a child. The mention ignited memories of so many comfort foods my mother made for me and my three siblings to stave off hunger while supper was still a ways off.
For the uninitiated, fried bologna is just that: slices of bologna fried in a pan of melted butter. Part of the thrill of the cooking process was watching the bologna inflate like a hot air balloon, which my mother would then pierce with a sharp knife to make it lie flat.
Why We Wrote This
Proust had his madeleine. For our writer, retro classics like Wonder bread, cold hot dogs, stovetop pudding, and ham sandwiches hearken back to his youth.
After browning it on both sides, she’d lay a slice between two squares of Wonder Bread. No vegetables, no dressing. Just the fried bologna, transformed by the application of heat. It was, in a word, delicious.
There were other culinary stopgaps for us children on the move. When my mother made a pot of spaghetti sauce for pasta night, she’d let me stir. And then, as a reward for my efforts, she’d lay a slice of Wonder Bread (What would we do without Wonder Bread?) on the surface of the sauce, and then lift it and transfer the sauce-painted slice to my waiting hands. No artisan pizza could compare to the taste, the aroma, the texture, of pasta sauce on Wonder Bread.
When I was 7 years old my parents enrolled me in a YMCA day camp. This meant providing me with a Davy Crockett lunch box, which my mom handed to me as I headed out the door. I never knew exactly what was in the lunch box until I opened it several hours later.
But after arts and crafts, archery, and a swim in the pool, sitting down and opening it was like exposing the Treasure of the Sierra Madre: There, lying in state, was a ham sandwich. No cheese, no mayo, no mustard, no lettuce. Just one thin slice of ham between – you got it – two slices of Wonder Bread, cut diagonally. I would eat the white of the bread and save the crust for last. Every crumb.
The hits continued. Stovetop chocolate pudding, which, as it cooled, formed thick skins that could be peeled away and gobbled like a treat in their own right. Green olives that my mom would stick on all 10 of my fingers and then send me on my way. Grilled cheese. Cold hot dogs. Colder pizza for breakfast. Tuna out of the can spread on saltine crackers.
When I refer to these foods in conversations with friends and acquaintances, I often get a “You poor kid” response. But I wasn’t a poor kid, or an object of pity. The ham sandwiches, pudding skins, tuna crackers, and, yes, fried bologna were dispensed with a smile and the deep satisfaction of a parent making a child happy. When my mother adorned my thin little fingers with those olives, I felt loved. Comfort food, indeed.
When the server brought my sensible bagel with chive cream cheese, I looked on with envious eyes as she laid my friend’s fried bologna before him. “Watch it, it’s hot,” she cautioned before retiring.
He took a bite, sat back, and, sighing with satisfaction, gushed, “Oh, my goodness.” Then he pushed the plate at me. My vegetarian impulse was to resist. But I am not a strong man. Reaching across the table was like reaching across the decades. I picked up a piece of fried bologna with my fork, laid it on my tongue, and closed my eyes.
Still ambrosia. After all these years.
