The Bologna Complexity

I went to the store today and came home with several bags of food. Among the food was a loaf of bread, a jar of peanut butter, and a package of bologna. When I was a kid I often made peanut butter and bologna sandwiches for school lunch and enjoyed eating them every time. I’m sure that has a certain yuck-factor for some people. But don’t knock it if you haven’t tried it. Many’s the day I sat in the school’s cafeteria, opened my brown paper lunch bag, and pulled out a peanut butter and bologna sandwich and a moon pie for dessert. Even today, far removed in time from my school days, the sandwich makes a quick and tasty snack enhanced, for me, with a bit of nostalgia.

Factoid: The sausage called bologna is named after the city in Italy where it was invented: Bologna (pronounced “boloan-ya”).

Many people pronounce bologna (as well as spell it) baloney. But technically, baloney is a different word with a different meaning. It means nonsense, as in “that’s a bunch of baloney.”

I’ve read that the name bologna is restricted to regions of northern Italy, and if you go south and ask for bologna, people won’t know what you’re talking about. In southern Italy, the same sausage is called mortadella. I suspect neither bologna nor mortadella are much like American bologna.

Bottom line: baloney can be sausage or it can be nonsense, but bologna is always sausage.

[UPDATE]
Upon reading this post, my amigo and fellow blogger CyberDave asked me if I have ever eaten a peanut butter and fried-bologna sandwich. I admitted I had not. I like fried bologna and think it’s tastier than bologna straight from the package, so I decided to try it. The result was both unexpected and disappointing. I could not taste the bologna on my sandwich. The bologna was hot from the frying pan and I could detect its warmth on my tongue, but as for taste: nothing. Much of what we call taste is actually smell, and it appears the frying process reduced the meat’s aroma. Oh well.