By the time you read this column, I will have enjoyed my very
first Gilroy Garlic Festival fried bologna sandwich. And I am
positive I enjoyed it.
By the time you read this column, I will have enjoyed my very first Gilroy Garlic Festival fried bologna sandwich. And I am positive I enjoyed it.
In fact, I’m quite certain that I loved the thick slice of fried garlic bologna on a Kaiser roll with ketchup, mayo, tomato and red onion. Sure it’s a gourmet twist on my childhood favorite – but that’s a good thing.
Fried bologna is my ultimate comfort food. You can have your memories of meatloaf surprise and tuna melts. You can even fondly recall bowls of Cap’n Crunch consumed on Saturday mornings while watching cartoons in footed jammies. For me, it’s fried bologna all the way – why, I even started my very first kitchen fire while frying bologna.
So you can imagine how shocked I was to discover that Harry hates fried bologna. In fact, he hates any kind of bologna, fried or otherwise. He even admitted that as a child he hated bologna.
I believe – and this is the most shocking part – that my husband is a bologna snob. Oh, you know that bologna snobs exist. They’re people who won’t eat bologna in any shape or form. Some shun it out of fear – who really knows what is in bologna? Others shun it out of taste – like Harry. He says it tastes like nothing.
Well that’s just horrifying. First of all, how can bologna taste like nothing? That doesn’t make sense – but that’s a bologna snob for you. I mean, it’s obvious that bologna tastes like something. If it didn’t, millions of school children across America wouldn’t be eating it.
And how can a child not like bologna? I believe that there is a federal law – possibly even a constitutional amendment – that makes it mandatory for children to love bologna on white bread. March into schools across the country and you will see children enjoying the heck out of their bologna sandwiches. But according to my husband, he wasn’t one of those children. Instead, he was a bologna snob.
Fortunately for me, Harry is a fairly benign bologna snob. I mean, I’ve met some snobs – and you know who you are – who recoil in absolute terror at the very mention of Oscar Mayer. Some snobs have been known to openly accuse bologna lovers of not having taste buds – or worse. But so far, Harry has just said he doesn’t like bologna.
Of course, the minute I realized that I was dealing with a bologna snob, I tried to trick Harry into admitting that he did, indeed, like bologna. I offered to make him a mortadella sandwich.
Some people don’t know that mortadella is really bologna in disguise. Yeah, the mortadella makers try to fool you by giving it a fancy name and adding garlic to it – but it’s really just bologna. Unfortunately, it turns out Harry knew mortadella’s secret and resisted eating it.
But then he got mean. He said that Junior was also a bologna snob. Well, that’s just not true. My son adores the scent of a freshly opened package of bologna. And even if Junior hated it – well, I just wouldn’t admit that to Harry. Look, it goes without saying that Junior and I need to be united on the bologna front. One snob per household is quite enough, thank you.
And you know, in a way, I feel sorry for Harry and the rest of the bologna snobs of this world. Because they don’t have any fond childhood memories of bologna. No kitchen fires. No sharing sandwiches with a schoolyard crush. No fried bologna and eggs on a Saturday morning.
And that’s why I’ll be scarfing down a fried bologna sandwich at the Garlic Festival. Because there are some foods that just scream comfort food. And a fried bologna sandwich, even if it is served with a gourmet twist, is still the most comfortable food on earth.
