Thoughts on Fried Baloney

Well, not really.

Fried baloney is very popular around here. Brewster the dog loves scrambled eggs with fried baloney. Kiki the parrot loves baloney in any form. The only person in this house who doesn’t eat baloney is Lady Sofie. She politely tells me “Cats don’t do baloney but we do like cat treats”

Now I’ve ate a lot of baloney in my life and always assumed cheap baloney would be about the worst food you could give somebody.

But I was wrong.

I had never tried to eat food that do gooders think is “good enough for poor people”

The Police department in partnership with a do gooder group have been operating a drive through food pantry in our neighborhood every Thursday. I happened to be working on some vacant lots over that way. So I pulled in and talked to them.

Last fall before I went into the hospital I had been working with the Buddhist Temple passing out fresh fruit and veggies. The boxes of fruit and veggies were large and more than one elderly person could eat before they spoiled. So I would let everybody pick and choose, then I gave what was left to a large extended family that would use the rest.

When I pulled in I was thinking about doing it again. They thought it was a good idea and gave me 4 boxes to pass out. These boxes were different in that they had dairy and meat products in them as well as fresh fruit and veggies. The meat products were cheap hotdogs, and 2 packages labeled taco meat.

The label on the taco meat said meat and soy fillers. So I thought ok. Taco Bell.

I wish.

I had a package left over so I opened it to see what it was like and maybe tacos for supper. I put some in a bowl and nuked it in the microwave. I took it out and the “meat” was swimming in grease. After straining out the grease I had 1/3 cup of “meat” and 1/4 cup of grease. A look at the label and the product was half fat with more grams of fat than protein. Of the 160 calories in a serving 110 of them were from fat. From what I could tell the manufacturer ground up beef tallow trimmings added a bit of soy to boost the protein and sold it as meat.

But it was good enough for poor people. If there is one constant in this neighborhood it is that statement.

Thank you for letting me rant.

Jack

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34 thoughts on “Thoughts on Fried Baloney”

  1. thanks, jack. motto of trail: rants R us
    here’s some background music for yours today

  2. pbs newshour 

    WATCH LIVE: NASA attempts first helicopter flight on Mars

    NASA plans to attempt the first flight on another planet at approximately 3:30 a.m. EDT (12:30 a.m. PDT). NASA’s mission control will receive data from the Ingenuity helicopter to study the flight attempt. NASA’s live broadcast begins at 6:15 a.m. EDT.

     

    NASA aims for historic helicopter flight on Mars (phys.org)

    NASA is hoping to make history early Monday when the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter attempts the first powered, controlled flight on another planet.
    The space agency had originally planned the flight for April 11 but postponed it over a software issue that was identified during a planned high-speed test of the aircraft’s rotors.
    The issue has since been resolved, and the four-pound (1.8 kilograms) drone could achieve its feat by around 3:30 am Eastern Time (0730 GMT).
    Data, however, won’t arrive until several hours later, and NASA will begin a livestream at 6:15 am (1015 GMT).
    “Each world gets only one first flight,” MiMi Aung, the Ingenuity project manager, said before the first attempt.
    […]
    After the flight, Ingenuity will send Perseverance technical data on what it has done, and that information will be transmitted back to Earth.
    This will include a black and white photo of the Martian surface that Ingenuity is programmed to snap while flying.
    Later, once its batteries have charged up again, Ingenuity is to transmit another photo—in color, of the Martian horizon, taken with a different camera.
    But the most spectacular images are supposed to come from the rover Perseverance, which will film the flight from a few meters away.
    Shortly after this filming, six videos of 2.5 seconds each will be sent to Earth. NASA hopes at least one of them will show the helicopter in flight.
    [continues]

  6. Jack

    Great necessary rant.  At present my household is in the middle of Spring cleaning and general “Stuff” disposal.  A large percentage of this will end up at the local shelters.  In addition our shelters have “wish lists” on Amazon for the most needed items.  This is the one wish list for our local manager, so you might check to see if a similar one exists for your general area Rescue Mission for gifting or ideas.

    Urgently Needed Items – Tacoma Rescue Mission (trm.org)

     

  7. WEll, NASA succeeded and Ingenuity had a 30 second Wright brothers half a moment,

    NASA successfully flew its four-pound helicopter from the surface of Mars early Monday, the first powered flight of an aircraft on another planet, a feat NASA officials compared to the Wright brothers first flight in 1903.

    At about 3:30 a.m., the twin, carbon-fiber rotor blades began spinning furiously, and the chopper, called Ingenuity, lifted off the surface of the Red Planet, reaching an altitude of about 10 feet, where it hovered, turned and landed softly in an autonomous flight that lasted just 30 seconds, the space agency said.

    Inside the flight operations center at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, engineers broke into applausewhen confirmation of the flight arrived, more than three hours after the flight, in a data burst that traveled 178 million miles from Mars to Earth.

    The atmosphere in the room turned almost giddy when a still photo shot from the helicopter captured its shadow on the ground, followed by video of the aircraft’s flight, captured by the nearby Mars rover Perseverance.
    (Continues)

    So now we have choppers on Mars.  I’m still a little foggy on this autonomous stuff, but then again, I use adaptive cruise control and lane assist on the interstate, and if they took the hand on wheel requirement out of the software, the car would literally drive itself, so I guess it isn’t too out of even my realm of understanding.

  9. Poobah, I seem to remember that you visited the Gold Dome Bar and Grill in Charleston and posted a pic of the fried baloney sandwich you had there.  Well, unfortunately you won’t be able to repeat that. The Gold Dome Bar & Grill, and Tony’s gold Dome BBQ (if that was where you got it) are both permanently closed.
     
    Jack all that talk about food good enough for poor people reminds me of government cheese.  Stuff was edible, but it was nothing to write home about.  It was good enough for soldiers in WWII, and after that poor folks who were welfare recipients, members of a Native American tribe on a reservation or incarcerated prisoners.  

  10. Craig – good with Cheez Wiz on them.
     
    Something important, at least to me, is the feeling I get when watching television shows from nineteen seventy  to mid-seventies about what was so very important fifty years ago is still true today.  There has been progress in some areas, such as women no longer view a job as something to do before finding a man and getting married.  But other areas such as being of any color and gender than white male is still a hindrance to success in the working world.  As a flaming bleeding heart liberal I find frustration at what has not been done in fifty years more an issue than what has happened.  The young new Progressives are too young to have seen and experienced those decades, yet they have taken up the fight to do what should have happened a very long time ago.

  11. Jack…   love that rant!
     
    My mother did make fried baloney to go with our eggs when we were kids.  So that makes it something that poor French people in Canada ate too.
     
    Reading that description of “taco meat” made my stomach curl.

  13. Fried baloney was a staple of this southern boy’s upbringing – for me it was sammiches.

  14. That’s why food deserts are dangerous to health, as well.  Lack of fresh produce and high fat/processed foods cost a lot in healthcare down the road.

    Watch the movie “Game Changer” and read the book, Mastering Diabetes. 

    jack – It was a very, worthwhile rant.

    Word from a nurse in Canada (related to a coworker) who got covid (with symptoms) after her first shot of Pfizer, because there is a vaccine shortage in Canada and there is a 4-month wait to get her second shot.

    Keep your masks on and stay home.

  15. I’m ok with fried baloney and I prefer thick slices not packaged supermarket stuff.  But my all time favorite in that category is liver wurst .
    And there seemed to be some sort of liver wurst shortage.  There is some in stores here now but it is an odd item to be short on.
     

  18. Regarding the Covid-19 lack of progress in case counts and progress in death counts, in the past month the average number of new cases per day has increased 26% (by 14523) from 55190 to 69713.  The average number of deaths per day over the same period has deceased by 26% (by 266 per day) from 1009 to 744.  Sounds like fewer of us old farts getting it and dying and more younger folks getting it and surviving. 

  19. Liverwurst – now there’s a great tasting ground meat treat.  I love liverwurst, but haven’t thought about buying it (or baloney) since LP was eating baloney probably 15 years ago.  OK, KC, now you have me wanting to go to Kroger and get some – they carry Boar’s Head Liverwurst and also have two different brands of braunschweiger, which I also like a bunch.

  20. Rick and I are wearing our masks…  but now that we are fully vaccinated… we are going out to breakfast.  We have booked a trip to Cape Cod for the second week of June ( Old SeaHag is excited that we will be visiting her on Martha’s Vineyard).  We are going to Vermont for a long weekend with a family wedding at the end of July.  And…. I can’t wait to be at my big craft fair again in August.

  21. I’ve mostly matured past ground-and-formed meats, but i am getting a gyro one of these days (God willing)

  22. It must be the nearness of Hawaii, but the California version of Bologna addiction is SPAM SPAM SPAM 

    Fried, roasted with pineapple & cloves, baked in pasta.  Probably should just say aloha.

     

  23. Now that the Chauvin trial as closed, do we have opinions?

    I’m pretty sure of a definite guilty on Manslaughter with a strong possibility of 3rd degree, but I doubt they will get to 2nd.

     

  27. Also, patd warned me of potential 2nd shot” side-effects: anecdotally, i know about 30ish people who got both doses, not a single one of them had any reaction to dose #2 of mRNA besides sore-arm

    Yes, i remember KGC saying Moderna shot #2 laid her out

  28. Liverwurst is great.  I had that in my lunch for a long time, through grade school and junior high school.  A few years ago I was in my local grocery store at the deli and spotted a new package of it.  Rather than buy from the cooler case I decided on deli.  “you eat that?” “yes, with yellow mustard too”.
     
    Trial guesses.  My first is that guy had better be convicted of something that puts him in prison for a long time.  Some of the blood mongers in the media bring up the Rodney King trial and verdict.  I think that is not necessary.  Those days are long gone, and especially since King lived.  When you have a murder committed in front of a large number of people it is very difficult to come up with a “not guilty”.  The big question is will they bring back second-degree murder, third-degree murder or manslaughter?  I would be covering up my store windows if I was a business person because there is the high risk of glass breakage no matter what the verdict.  It will not be enough.  
     
    As I was talking about in my note above, some things have changed in fifty years, and some have not.  We are no where near justice for crimes committed by systemic racism.    At least we are dragging much of the country over to the side of “stop killing Black kids”.

  30. SPAM song - YouTube

    mmmmm…. fried spam. childhood memories. 

    but first,  beware of cutting oneself on the tin spiral when twisting the key.  

  32. Patd

    You’re right about that key opener.  The current pull top can be hazardous as well.  Not quite as bad, but you better get it on the first try.

     

  33. Nope. Tried Spam once, maybe twice. That was enough. 
    Manslaughter 3rd, leaning toward 2nd. 

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