Some of my friends' moms used to fry the baloney. One of my friends' moms used to boil it. But everyone's mom bought baloney.
I don't think it was the same everywhere, but in our town, this was the way. In some places I think people bought bologna. I think this because the spelling on the package never made sense to me.
My mother bought baloney but she didn't cook it. It just came between two slices of bread, adhered with margarine. If I could stand the taste of ketchup in this mix, I could have had that too, but the audacity of the recipe was already enough for anyone, I thought.
Just so you know, boiled baloney isn't good. Imagine if you boiled a skinless hot dog. But these are rituals, and they belong to families in the same way that baptisms and circumcisions do. Everyone feels safe.
What comforts us isn't goodness, and it often isn't good. What comforts us is that we're not the first ones down this road, on this path, sitting in this saddle.
What excites us is the opposite. Once we have been excited to our satisfaction, or perhaps to our limit of tolerance, then we need to be comforted.
In our old age, we need our baloney fried.
