A Lotta Baloney
Many of you are familiar with Croghan Bologna, which is a summer-sausage type delicacy I can best describe as similar to the world famous Lebanon bologna but a bit coarser and tastier. It has been made for many years in the small Adirondack foothills town of Croghan, NY, which you might call a suburb of Lowville. I grew up on Croghan Bologna, and it hasn’t changed much in the past 60 years, though the makers have changed and evolved. It used to be our favorite deer-hunting lunches when I was a boy and hunting with my Dad and brothers: a chunk of “Crog” and one of Mom’s buttered biscuits and maybe a candy bar for dessert.
We still enjoy Crog when we can, but now there is something even better. Our hunting group was lucky enough to harvest a few deer last fall, and we trimmed out a hundred pounds or so of the stew meat and such and had it made into bologna. Now I have had venison summer sausage, breakfast sausage, and such, but was never really crazy about any of them. Ed’s Meat Market, in Indian River, which is a suburb of Croghan, came up with their own bologna recipe, which in my opinion is even better than the original. Maybe it is the venison (considered health food by some); maybe because it was ground finer with less filler; maybe the secret ingredients – whatever, it is more like the Croghan Bologna I remember as a boy, and a real treat. Next year, if I harvest a deer, I think I will grind everything but the loins and antlers!
And that’s Just My Opinion.