Full Of Bologna

     Growing up I don't remember any kind of lunch meat other than bologna. It was cheap then and it's still inexpensive today.  This week I paid 69 cents for a 12 oz package.  You really can't call it meat but to this day I still like the stuff.  Yes I know it has a terrible reputation  but add a slice of processed cheese to a slice of bologna and it will make cheap white bread a delight.

     As a child, going grocery shopping with my mother was quite an experience especially when we got to the meat counter.  Meat of any kind was not packaged like it is today.  60 years ago you had to ask the butcher for the meat you wanted.  In the case of bologna, the butcher would hold up a huge tube of what looked like a giant wienie.  The butcher would ask my mother how many pounds she wanted and how thick or thin she wanted each slice.  Times have sure changed but today's bologna taste the same today as it did 60 years ago.  

     Around the age of 6 I can remember going on fishing trips with my father were bologna and cheese sandwiches  were more plentiful that the fish we caught.  By the time I was 10 I was frying bologna in Worcestershire sauce and by 18 I was taking a bologna and cheese sandwich to work every day.  In fact I ate a fried Worcestershire and bologna on white bread  and  bologna with cheese on white bread sandwiches this week but they did not make me fill like I was 10 or 18 again.  When I saw the recipe for a Bologna Bowl  maybe it was my chance to be a new bologna boy at age 66.  I'll admit the recipe did not sound too promising but bologna in it's processed  goodness  can't ever be screwed up so I took a bowl out of the cabinet and went to work constructing myself a bologna bowl.