The Anti-Flavor

As white as a sammich gets

The classic bologna, Kraft single, mayo on white bread is about as white as food can get. Let’s examine this delightful gustatory creation.  

To begin with, it’s very soft and is easily masticated with just enough mayo for it to slide down your throat. It has a slight firmness to know you are chewing something, with only a hint of resistance. 

Like the light pressure to the teeth, the taste is light as well. It has enough salt to let you know it’s there, but other than it tastes like, nothing.

That isn’t fair, it has a distinct lack of flavor. It is the anti-flavor. The only real way you know you ate a bologna sandwich is that your stomach feels like you ate something, but even that is debatable. 

Sure, you can put mustard on it, but why not have a sandwich of just mustard? Or even a better sandwich? A bologna sandwich with mustard is a mustard sandwich.

You are not eating bologna, Kraft single, with mayo on white bread for the excitement. No, the venerable bologna sandwich is for a simpler, less reflective moment, when you just want to choose something that requires no risk.

I mean bologna sandwiches are an expected taste, not an acquired one. A sandwich made with mustard or having exotic fixings and finishings, just makes the whole thing uncomfortable. The humble anti-flavor enhanced by salt is reassuring. 

Familiar nourishment in your sack lunch, the sandwich that a harried parent threw together as you headed out the door. Why yes, it did sit in your locker until lunch. Although, that probably produced the most flavor your bologna with Kraft single ever had.

I guess I came to bury the bologna sandwich, not praise it. It is true that it is simpler to relegate this choice between two pieces of bread as just another one of a thousand choices we make each day. Just one more motion we are going through.

A bite of a slightly resistant, fluffy, white bread sandwich with enough mass to qualify as food, but tastes almost like something. It is exactly as satisfying as you want it to be and as comforting.