Baloney and eggs

EVERYTHING IS PLASTIC NOW

Have you ever had a serious craving, Reader?

Ever had a serious craving that also induced severe shame?

For those of you who are new to this Jelly newsletter—welcome to the Thunderdome.

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My mother was not/is not a good cook. We had pasta (macaroni) with homemade (sort of if you count opening tomato cans as DIY) sauce six, sometimes seven nights a week.

But every now and then she'd pull out a small frying pan and cut a piece of baloney into small triangles, like a pale pink pizza.

She'd let it crisp and sizzle in the pan as she whisked a couple of eggs with a fork, waiting for the house to smell like an intoxicating sort of candied plastic before pouring them on top.

Though, if I was a good girl that day, she'd let me have one of the crispy triangles before the eggs changed up the whole scenario.

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Baloney and eggs.

Sometimes I sit down on my couch as a forty-one year old woman with bills and daycare and back aches and I just want my mom to make me baloney and eggs.

Most of the time, when I sit down and have that craving I immediately feel shame.

Do you know how gross baloney is? Like, the one in the yellow circle with the plastic you have to peel off? It's gross.

Most of the time, wanting baloney and eggs makes me feel the same way I feel when I'm in a really rich person's home and they ask me kindly to "make a quick charcuterie board" and I don't know how to cut any of the damn cheeses. Or what, exactly, a charcuterie board is.

A craving for baloney and eggs makes me feel like I'm low.

Like I don't belong anywhere good.

Like I'll always be limited. Or less than.

Well, most of the time that's what wanting baloney and eggs makes me feel.

If you've made it this far, maybe you've been yelling at me through the interwebs that I've been spelling "baloney" wrong!!!

Yes there is a...linguistic difference between bologna and baloney: one is made of meat.

The other is just nonsense.

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Until next time, save a crispy one for me.

Kristy