Sin

Restaurant: Fried Bologna/My Kitchen
Intersection: A Trailer Park and A Mullet
Rating: 5/5

January 24^th, 2010:

            Everyone experiments in college, especially in art school. Sometimes you find that you don’t like something. Sometimes you truly find something you do like something. Sometimes you find out something about yourself that you never wanted to find out, an secret that you’ve buried deep within yourself. I experimented. I found out something about myself. I am not proud of what I found out. What I found out goes against a lot of the beliefs that I was raised on. I found out that I am white trash to the bone, the core, the very marrow. I feel that someone who writes a food blog should let his readers know about his culinary sins.

            I’d always known I was different. I was raised by lawyers. I was raised by learned people who had doctorates. I was raised on U2, REM and Pearl Jam from the cradle. Yet I’d always had these corn-fed urges. It started around age 9 when I first took an interest in professional wrestling. My parents didn’t know what to think of it and quickly put an end to it. Then, around age 14, I started to be interested more and more in professional wrestling. It became one of my quirkier interests. It became part of my geek-dom holy trinity: Movies, Music and Pro-Wrestling.

            But pro-wrestling was only my gateway to more white trash behavior. Eventually, I discovered gravy. I discovered that there was no such thing as a bad meal if there was enough gravy on said meal to choke a cow.

            Now I have fallen completely down the white trash rabbit hole. I am standing over a hot skillet, full of frothing butter. I am holding two slices of bologna in my hand. Do I dare? Do I drop the slices into the sizzling pan? Fry up the lunch meat, throw on some wrestling and change my name to Jethro? Boredom and hunger are a dangerous mix.

            The bologna makes really odd sounds as it fries. The smells its making are downright dangerous. God forbid I should enjoy any part of this. This is supposed to be a reassuringly disgusting experience but its not; nowhere close. Every step in making this is leading me closer and closer to a double wide.

            I have no idea when fried bologna is done so I am playing this all by ear, smell and sight. It looks done and has probably been in the pan long enough to be hot all the way through. I flip the glistening slices onto the plate. Hot sauce is the universal condiment.

            This is delicious. This is heaven. This is now, in my mind, the only way to eat bologna. If fried bologna is wrong, I don’t want to be right. I am so wrapped up in white trash bliss that I decide to throw WWF Summerslam 1994 into the DVD player. Sitting on my couch, I eat every last bit while watching some old school wrasslin’. This is what art school is all about.