50 States Sandwich Challenge: Arkansas

Arkansas.  Home of Walmart and sexy sax President Bill Clinton.  Honestly, I don't know much about Arkansas except that Little Rock is always battling Camden, NJ for the most dangerous city in the U.S. and that it's one of those weird "West of the Mississippi/Southern States."  Is it the West or is it the South? Only the Missouri Compromise could tell. (In 1820, Maine was admitted as a free state, while Missouri was admitted as a slave state.  This exact line of thought was used again in 1836 when Michigan was admitted free and Arkansas a slave state.)  Verdict: Arkansas is the South. The next question most people might be asking about Arkansas is "why is it pronounced differently than Kansas? Why is it not AR-Kansas? (New model of assault rifle hitting Walmart shelves  Christmas 2021!) Well, because the original tribe who settled the area was the Quapaw which was phonetically translated by the French (who claimed the area as part of their colony in America) as Arkansea, hence the pronunciation Arkansas with a silent 's' at the end.  So you can blame the French for that.  Today, Arkansas is home to the Walmart corporation, which is the world's largest company by revenue ($514B) and the largest employer in the world (2.2M employees).  Surely, all this revenue is spread around the state and the ancestral home of the Clintons would give us a rich, southern-style sandwich, right? 

WRONG. 

We're doing a bologna sandwich today, folks.  Fried bologna.  Just like in 1836. There's absolutely no history as to why this is the state sandwich so let me just make the very rude assumption that Arkansas is "historically poor" and bologna is cheap. Some people say bologna is similar to pork roll, and to those people, I say "how dare you." I have to say I did really enjoy bologna sandwiches growing up so I'm excited to try this "grown-up" version of frying the bologna first. Ok, let's jump in.  

Ingredients:

2 Slices Wonder Bread

4 Slices of your favorite bologna

1 Slice of American Yellow Cheese

Spicy Brown Mustard 

1. Spread some spicy brown mustard on the wonderbread.  

2. Oil up your pan and hit it on medium-low.  Place some bologna on there. 

3. When you flip the last bologna slice.  Put on some white American cheese. 

4.  Take the bologna and cheese and put it on that wonderbread.  Put it in the toaster for a light toast and there you have it folks, the state sandwich of Arkansas.