Balcony Bounty and Fried Bologna

Living within the walls of the village means that we don’t have access to an orto, or vegetable garden, but we do have a little balcony that has produced some delicious strawberries and our first little tomatoes.  We prepared them very simply….I popped one into Jeff’s mouth, I ate the other one, and we split the third. Instant gratification.

Of course we have all sorts of elaborate schemes to get our hands on a garden, but for now we have our pomodorini to keep us happy.

There has been a mortadella publicity campaign, which is strange on so many levels.  Mortadella is huge pink, fat flecked salami, larger in circumference than a dinner plate, and it’s vaguely obscene, like a fat cigar is vaguely obscene. There are posters around and about, and the other day at the COOP they were giving out tastings of this Emilia-Romagna treat.

To back up a bit, the city of Bologna is in the region of Emilia-Romagna, and mortadella looks like US bologna on steroids.
We were advised to fry it in a dry pan and then serve it over polenta. I wasn’t up for polenta, so we tried the fry thing, and it tasted exactly like….fried baloney. Which if you like that sort of thing is fine, but it doesn’t really work for me. I don’t like hot dogs either; maybe it’s just that ground up pink color that gets me. In any event, I think I’ll leave the mortadella for those who enjoy gigantic hunks of baloney.

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