A Meat By-Product.... Cold Cuts

Today for lunch I had cold cuts. In this part of the world we call it "lunch meat" which is a pretty loose term and can catch anything from baloney (we don't say bologna here) to sliced turkey breast to little weenies (vienna sausages). I was in the grocery store yesterday with Sally and she said I oughta grab some lunch meat so my choice was a package of smoked ham, some beef cotto salami and.... pickle loaf.

Now I've seen the types of beef that is destined to become lunch meat, and to be honest it's not the type of meat that you'd welcome into your freezer or barbecue grill, or to marry your daughter, if you saw it languishing in the meat counter at the store. Some of it'll just make you say words like "Gahh!" while you shudder. But... lol I eat it anyway. I figure it's pretty much purified and de-Gahhed by the time it get's packaged up in shrink wrap goodness.

When I was a boy there were 2 country stores that we shopped at some. One was the store at Cherry Box and the other was the Nickellton store. Both had a meat counter and the store keeper sliced off whatever you wanted while you stood there eating cheese he handed out for you to sample. One of the things that my Grandpa always got was liver cheese, and when I was a little, I remember loving this stuff. Me and Grandpa would eat it on saltines with mustard and I thought it was great! 5 or 6 years ago Sal and I were in a store and I spotted some liver cheese in the meat case and had the meat cutter slice some for me.

I can't tell you how eager I was to get home and actually "eat nostalgia". I had all these happy visions of me and grandpa and the country stores and stuff like that. I smelled the liver cheese and it brought back even more memories... I looked at the traditional band of white fat around the outside edge of it... I was almost driven to tears with happiness and remembrances.... and then I bit the sandwich.

OH HOLY CRAP! WHAT THE HELL WAS WRONG WITH ME WHEN I WAS LITTLE?!?! HACK! GAG! BLLEEEECHHHH!!!! I couldn't get that nasty, gooey, pastey crud spit into the garbage can fast enough. I sat there and ate a slice of bread and bit an onion to get that taste out of my mouth. Good grief, they could fight a war with that crap, and win. You'd send soldiers out with 5 pounds of liver cheese each and when they ran into the enemy all they'd have to do is just pull it out and show it to 'em and the bad guys would just lay down their guns and throw up.

Sometimes we need to just leave happy childhood memories alone. Seriously.

Oh... and want to see what liver cheese looks like? I knew you did.

Brace yourselves.



So today I calmly ate my pickle loaf sandwich with some cheese and thanked God that it wasn't liver cheese.