Appalachian Word of the Week -- BALONEY SALAD

Of all the food I enjoyed eating around the Christmas season, the one that holds the sweetest memories for me is BALONEY SALAD sandwiches.

Every Christmas Eve, Granny would make a batch large enough to feed Harlan County for our party at her house. I could hardly wait to sink my teeth into a few of them.

BALONEY SALAD is the poor man’s ham.  At least that’s what my family said.

Here’s the recipe:

1 big log of baloney

Boiled eggs (About 4, according to size of batch)

Sweet gherkins, diced tiny

Mayonnaise (Granny used Miracle Whip)

Fitted to Granny’s kitchen table was a metal meat grinder. She peeled and cut the baloney into large chunks and fed it through the grinder. It came out into a big mixing bowl, looking like baloney spaghetti.

Then she fed the boiled eggs through the grinder, according to how much she was making.

Next, she chopped up her gherkins into tiny little bits and added them to the mixture. Mayo came last. Then she stirred it all up together until it became BALONEY SALAD.

Sometimes I got to help with the process. She especially let me help spread the salad onto fresh white Bunny Bread. That fresh, soft bread was the best in the world.

The sandwiches were sliced into two and then placed on platters, covered with foil or Saran Wrap, and then plopped them into the fridge until the party.

When the family arrived and the party was on the way, everyone dived into those BALONEY SALAD SANDWICHES as if they hadn’t eaten anything since Thanksgiving. There was rarely a morsel left at the end of the night.

Yes, those sandwiches still bring a smile to my face when I think about them. As I get older, I realize how special growing up in the mountains truly was. We didn’t have much, but we were abundantly wealthy. Wealth should be measured by your attitude toward your blessings.

As we near the time when we are expected to make resolutions for the new year, how about we look back on our lives and choose to find the blessings in even the smallest of things? I think it could add a lot of joy to our lives in the midst of such suffering and negativity continually being thrown at us.

What’s one memory from 2016 that you count as a blessing?