Black pudding - another 🤢🤮 I took a bite of it on a dare while eating breakfast at Westminster Abbey.

No offense to floral_uk 🙂

Just had a memory. I babysat a neighbors 3 kids every day after school and during summer for several years. They used to beg me to make bologna spread for their lunch. It was finely chopped bologna with sweet pickles and Miracle Whip spread on white bread. Not something I ate but they loved it.

https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZP8BWn6yK/

Elmer - Not sure if this is what you saw or not, she seems to get a decent amount of exposure and the details sound very close to what you described, right down to the smile after the list. But she’s not a doctor so it might not be the same. I see this one has run into issues with the FTC before.

https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/ftc_gov/pdf/warning-letter-andrews.pdf

sephia, my Ukrainian mother-in-law used to serve a dish that I always thought was stewed nuts 😳 cut from some type of male farm animal. It looked awful. I learned years later it was actually head cheese and called ’studenetz’ in Ukrainian.

I still didn’t eat it.

But back to balogna. My daughter liked it for a while, a picky eater I was happy just to have something to pack for lunch during her balogna kick. Had to be Boars Head. If I couldn’t get Boars Head for whatever reason and tried to sneak a different brand, she’d pick up on it immediately and wouldn’t eat it. Oh and it had to be peeled, because why make anything easy.

It’s a staple in Newfoundland.

https://www.saltscapes.com/kitchen-party/2278-newfoundland-steak.html

excerpt

Andrew Hodge, executive chef at the Holiday Inn St. John’s-Government Centre, in St. John’s, NL, says bologna was a regular menu item at his home when he was growing up; his family dined on it at least once a week.

“When I was a child, my father and I would cut bologna into little pieces and drizzle it with plain white vinegar as a nighttime snack,” he recalls. “We would chat about some of our hunting or fishing adventures—definitely some of my favourite memories.”

As a young boy, Hodge enjoyed a cut of bologna pressed between two thick slices of his mother’s homemade bread. Today, he takes bologna to a whole new level.

“I would say my favourite way now is still on a sandwich, but I tend to jazz up my sandwiches a little more; I might add some grainy mustard, fresh arugula, heirloom tomatoes or even some sauerkraut. I could eat these at least once or twice a week.”

Chef Hodge says bologna is one of the most versatile deli meats; it can be paired with nearly anything—even wine—which may contribute to its popularity.

“If I had to pick a wine to pair with bologna, I would pick a nice bold merlot,” he says. “The flavours of black cherries and currents blend nicely with the rich, fatty flavour of the bologna.”

His advice: “Don’t be afraid to try something different; you might just surprise yourself.”

Processed meat is a known carcinogen. I have never eaten it or served it to my kids back in the day. But my father loved Lebanon Baloney and ate it for supper all the time. Of course, as a child, I had no health knowledge; all I knew was I thought it was gross-tasting.

We had Oscar Meyer bologna sandwiches on white bread with mayo as kids. So it has been decades since I've eaten it. But I attended an end of summer pool party a few years ago and the hostess served a whole bologna that she slow roasted. It was delicious. She said it was an Emeril Lagasse recipe - brown sugar crusted slow baked bologna.

I never eat bologna. My parents used to though. Dad worked nights so Mom made his big meal of the day before he went to work. One day he was working outside, came in to eat and was so disappointed to find out he had steak. He'd smelled Mom frying bologna for her lunch sandwich and it smelled so good to him!

Cotto salami has peppercorns.

I haven't eaten any of those type of meats for decades.

We used to occasionally eat fried bologna or fried salami when I was a kid. Also tongue. I haven't had bologna (or tongue) in 40 years, at least, and will occasionally have salami on a sandwich or pizza every year or so.

Am I the only person who sings the Oscar Mayer song in my head so I can spell bologna correctly?

I live in NW Pennsylvania. We have a local company called Smith that make ham, hot dogs and bologna. They are the best and an area favorite

We didn't have bologna except as a treat when I was a kid. We did have braunschweiger but I didn't like it as a kid. I do now and every few years will get some for a sandwhich with ketchup. A grilled cheese and bologna sandwich with tomato is also a treat.

Rose, lots of good stuff comes out of Pennsylvania. When my brother lived there, he worked for Oscar Mayer. His kids came to hate the stuff, lol, but he made a good living. When he would come to visit, he would bring birch beer. That was such a treat. Good times.

We ate fried bologna a lot growing up and frequently after I married. We eat very seldom now, because ???.

You had to cuts slits in the bologna so it would stay somewhat flat. White bread with French’s mustard, two slices per sandwich.

Yes to fried bologna with eggs! White bread sandwich with mustard.

My childhood memories are more with Hebrew National salami.

“I haven't had bologna (or tongue) in 40 years, at least…”

Same here…and yes regarding the Oscar Mayer song!

You havent lived until you’ve had scrapple. I refused to eat it as a kid. I thought it was literally made of scraps swept off the floor. Its made of all the leftover pork parts, then ground up and smooshed together. Its a Pennsylvania Dutch thing. Yuck.

I also tought Shoo Fly pie was made of dead flies but I ate it anyway.

They used to sell Taylor Pork Roll sandwiches on the boardwalk. I think it was basically fried bologna with a slit in it. I passed on that, too.

Now that I think about it, I still like what we called ring bologna. Its another Pennsylvania Dutch thing and more like a sausage but eaten cold. Now I want some!

Head cheese is the head of a pig sanz eyeballs and brains cooked in water till the meat falls from the bones. The meat is chopped and the broth cooked till it will gel. You add your spices of choice or none but salt and the meat is packed in a bowl or pan and the broth poured over it and allowed to set. Think poor man's aspic. Nothing any more gross about it than a pork chop. Often served with vinegar or hot pepper sauce in the south. We were told as children that we would not like it. The adults did not want to share.

patriciae

Taylor Pork Roll was always a staple at the Boardwalk in Ocean City, NJ. Scrapple was/is the most disgusting food I have ever heard of, and yet it was a staple among the German population in Pa, like my family. It was never served by my mother, but the grandparents ate it, and my thin, active grandfather dropped dead on a main street of his town at 65! I remember always asking him if I could have "pudding", and he would say it's not the kind you're thinking of. I don't even know to this day what it was, but some kind of organ meat. All this must have led to my vegetarian lifestyle for the past 40+ years.

"Nothing any more gross about it than a pork chop."

At least pork chops don't look gross 😆 I need my food to be visually appealing. Head cheese looks nasty.

I haven't eaten it in a long time, but mom used to make us fried bologna and cheese sandwiches that I remember loving. Basically a grilled cheese with a slice of fried bologna. I am also a fan of cotto salami but haven't had it in a while either. Time for a fried bologna sandwich!

I like Lebanon bologna, but it is hard to find in my area. I have a friend who will bring some from Pennsylvania when she visits. I also like a sandwich with all-beef bologna occasionally, and I have a fondness for fried bologna with lots of mustard. Not too often though.

I like scrapple too.

PattiG , you must have Pennsylvania German genes! I think Lily and I are distantly related.

I just had a random thought from long ago. Hog Maw. Ewww. Another German dish served at the grandparents. Never touched it and was again grossed out as a little kid. Maybe pig stomach?

Yes, it's the stomach. Totally gross. It reminded me of going to the butcher shop with my mom and seeing cow's tongue, pig's knuckles and other delicacies. I would never knowlingly eat anything like that.

A lot of organ meats have been popular over time, mostly because when someone raised an animal for food, all of the parts were intended for consumption or other use.

Tripe (a part of the stomach) is popular in many cultures. Besides all the liver dishes in European traditions, sweetbread is common. Veal sweetbread is "ris de veau" in French, commonly seen on menus. Brits like their steak and kidney pie. And the unforgettable Scottish contribution to haute cuisine, haggis. Which I believe is sheep heart, lungs, and liver among other things. Unforgettable because if you've ever had it (as I have), you won't forget the experience.

Is it just a clever coincidence that such stuff in English is called "offal"? Because most of it surely is.

Here bologna is called "polony", but in other Australian states it's called "Devon" or "fritz". It's not bad, but I prefer mortadella, with or without inclusions.

There's a really good German butcher in the city who makes all of his own cold cuts, bacon etc. I stock up on his stuff whenever I'm in the area. He makes a leberkase which is not unlike mortadella, which we have fried in thick slices for an occasional treat. He also makes leberwurst, which I love (it makes awesome sandwiches spread thickly on buttered bread) and which for decades DH made a face about. One day I said" (as I had been saying all those years), "Honestly, it's just like pate. Try a bit." He finally did, and now he also loves leberwurst.

I remember my aunt in WI frying up sliced ring bologna with onions and potatoes - so good!

My mom made boiled tongue on the regular.

carolb: that sounds pretty good. No one would think it would be weird to do that with kielbasa or a breakfast sausage treatment. Why not bologna? I'm going to try that.

My grandfather used to make us "cigars" for lunch: peanut butter and bologna rolled up into a tube. Sounds awful but I do remember loving it.

Dedtired, I do. When I used to visit my aunt in Pennsylvania, we used to have scrapple and eggs for breakfast, ring bologna and pretzels with mustard as a snack. I draw the line at head cheese though. At least you can't really see what's in scrapple.

Bologna, that’s a blast from the past! I remember it as the “economical” cold cut for sandwiches, usually combined with Velveeta cheese on Wonder bread. I liked it okay as a kid, I think.

Kendrah, I think there's a universal law of grandpa food. It looks weird and hits your plate at an odd temperature, but it tastes good, and only Grandpa knows how to make it. :D

The US 'head cheese' is what we in the UK call 'brawn'. Back in the day, when people used ALL the parts of an animal it was either prepared and sold by the butcher or, as in my family's case made by my mother. It took an age to do, first boiling up the head (not a pretty sight), then adding the stock/jelly. then pressing and cooling the mixture using an old flat-iron. My father enjoyed all these long out of fashion types of meat and ate this at breakfast, sliced thin with a pool of vinegar and mustard covering it. We children were expected to also eat it, but with much less enjoyment.

Black pudding, faggots, haggis etc are still made/sold over here as is offal, 'though much better quality from a good butcher rather than a supermarket.

I've made brawn too. But without the flat iron. I really like it. It's basically chunks of pork in a tangy meat jelly. Not a lot different from a terrine. The fact that the meat is from the pig's head rather than its butt is not a problem imo. I also like faggots, haslet, liver, tripe, kidney and black pudding. Not keen on tongue due to the texture rather than the source. I'm firmly of the opinion that if you're prepared to kill and eat an animal you should at least show it some respect it by using every last bit you can. Bologna, on the other hand, like most highly processed meat products, looks unappetising to me and there's no way of knowing what's in it.

Coincidentally, I watched this video the other day about making brawn...

I had to avert my eyes from that cooked head tho🫣

Yes, we grew up on bologna sandwiches as well. My mother would also put slices of it on a baking sheet, top it with left over mashed potatoes, half the batch mixed with a little ketchup, and baked until the potatoes were browned and the bologna curled into a "bowl".

A few years ago we had a restaurant where truckers would come for breakfast. Occasionally we'd have customers from eastern Canada requesting fried "Newfie steak" with their eggs and potatoes. We always had some in the freezer for them.

Bologna is no longer an economical item - I work in the deli of a major grocery chain and a customer came in a few days ago asking for 400 grams of sliced bologna. The price on the tag was $16.

Here butchers used to give slices of polony to children who were shopping with their mothers.

We lived in a village on the outer reaches of Monterey for years, and the kids could all get a slice of bologna from the butcher until the store sold to a new owner and the butcher retired, about 1995.

Hobbit, I took baloney sandwiches with mustard on day-old white bread to school in Portland for years, day after day, interspersed with pbjs and tuna sands. I didn’t think to be embarrassed, (I was always starving for lunch.) We were allowed a school lunch once a month, as Mom considered them expensive.

As I grew up, I had nothing but disdain for baloney and found it disgusting. Fast-forward to pregnancy-morning-sickness days, and one of the VERY few foods I could keep down was the very same baloney sandwiches. I have a vivid memory of my 2 and 4-year-olds making me one of the sandwiches, with mustard smeared all over the place, sweet girls. Good times.

My great grandparents were “Germans from Russia” and settled in South Dakota. Mom and Dad were raised in SD, but left their farm soon after my oldest brother was born at the nurse’s home on the kitchen table. They brought their recipes to California with them. I was born in Lodi, where a lot of Germans put down new roots. We children grew up eating Blood Sausage, Summer Sausage, Head Cheese, Kase Kniphla, Arrivila (I don’t remember the spelling), and Koladets (similar to Head Cheese), made with pig’s feet. Us four kids sliced it and slathered it with ketchup. I loved it and called it pig’s foot jello.

When we took road trips, Mom would bring along a jug of Kool-Aid, a jug of water, a loaf of bread, butter, and bologna. Good times.

sushipup2 I remember that as a child in the 50s/early 60s. The butcher, even in in grocery stores, would give children a slice of bologna or sometimes a hot dog and the bakery would give each child a cookie. That's so nice the butcher kept that tradition going so many years.

Sad :( Not the lovely stories. Considering what once was a kindness, and a little extra nutrition for growing kids, would now be a big fuss over what the kids were allowed to eat. sigh

also sad, a generation later, I was flabbergasted to learn that home made goodies were no longer allowed for kids to bring to school for sharing. Only store bought, un opened packages. My kids are grown, so I don't know if it's still like that.

Our grocery stores and my food co-op, as well as rhe farmer’s market gives kids a free piece of fruit.

hobbitmom Reminds me of the time my DD who was in 2nd grade asked me 2 evenings before to make 36 individual bumble bee cakes for her class giving me less than a full 2 days notice. I stayed up one night piping royal icing wings and another decorating those cakes. When my kids were in elementary school they were just starting to transition to the packaged foods only thing. But the teachers and the principal loved my cakes so much a blind eye was turned for the remaining few years my children attended. I don't remember what it was for. Not her birthday, or I would have been prepared.

When talk of old school lunches came up it had me remembering mine. Not processed meat but I had lamb and green tomato pickle sandwiches Monday through to Thursday. We would have a large leg of lamb roast on the Sunday and the cold lamb slices did us all for lunches the next 4 days. The fifth day, being the Friday I would be given a Vegemite sandwich.

My old Grandmother was the maker of the green tomato pickles and they were good. This lunch was such a regular occurrence that other kids would ask me just to hear the answer ‘what you got for lunch’ “Meat and pickles” followed by lots of laughs

By the way , I have no idea why I am now a PRO

Mmm - love roast lamb for sandwiches! I make mine like roast beef ones - just lettuce and mustard and thin slices of rare meat.

Lamb is awfully scarce around here nowadays, and what little there is is so pricey and never very large either. That must've been a pretty big leg! I never see them much larger than a 2-3 pounds now.

I understand it's because we don't produce as much wool here as we once did.

" The fifth day, being the Friday I would be given a Vegemite sandwich. "

Either your mother hated you or you're in Australia ;-) .