Say what you will about haute cuisine, there is nothing more satisfying than a sandwich.
Yes, a sandwich. Two slices of bread, a little of this and a little of that in between, hot or cold or somewhere in the middle, nothing beats a sandwich.
The sandwich is so legendary, a British royal was named after it. OK, maybe it was the other way around, but the sandwich is still tops.
A sandwich doesn’t cost much most of the time, is highly customizable and is very personal. You just can’t say that about a steak. A steak is all business. It’s the stockbroker of the food pyramid.
A sandwich is that neighbor who invites you over to watch the game on his giant-screen TV. A sandwich is jolly and sloppy and a heck of a lot of fun.
I have a lot of favorites. I’m not too picky. I once had a reuben in a place in New York City that was so large, it could feed a small nation. Corned beef, sauerkraut, Swiss and Russian dressing piled six inches high between two thick pieces of grilled rye.
I think the reuben might be my favorite sandwich, seconded only by the turkey club. They are the yin and yang of the sandwich world. While the reuben is savory and undeniably urban, the club sandwich is cool and crisp and almost frivolous.
My wife’s tastes are decidedly simpler. She prefers egg salad on white bread and the ever-popular peanut butter and jelly. Though her tastes in sandwiches say otherwise, my wife is older than 11 years old.
I have traveled this country and have sampled the regional favorites. I’m originally from Maryland, so the crab cake sandwich is a given. The crab cake needs to be large and contain huge chunks of lump crab meat. I don’t put any condiments or anything on mine.
If you are from Maryland, and the crab meat is good, nothing can make the sandwich any better. Putting tartar sauce or cocktail sauce on a crab cake should be justification for imprisonment.
I have had po’ boys and muffalettas from New Orleans. I prefer the po’ boy, but the muffaletta is no slouch. I like New England lobster rolls, but they are too expensive and never seem to have enough actual lobster on them.
I guess the Philly cheesesteak can be considered a sandwich. Done correctly, it is a meal itself. There are two places in Philadelphia across the street from one another that competed directly for the most popular cheesesteak. I settled that argument by getting one of each and enjoying both.
The sandwich is portable. I once had one that was composed of turkey, stuffing and cranberry sauce on wheat toast. Thanksgiving dinner in your hand. All it needed was Uncle Jack and his ever-present gin and tonic yelling about how female government workers held all the power in the free world. Everything I enjoyed about the autumn holiday season on one sandwich. If I could have found a way to work in some pumpkin pie, I would have.
Sandwiches are enjoyed by every age group. Everyone has a favorite. Across this country on any given day, millions of sandwiches are consumed during lunch hours from coast to coast. If you were to place all the slices of bread side by side, you would be able to cross the continental United States, well, a big bunch of times.
Allegedly, our taste in sandwiches changes as we mature into adulthood. I have discovered this to be largely untrue as a BLT tastes nowhere as fun and as good as the simplicity of the fluffernutter. For those of you who do not know, the fluffernutter is a combination of your preferred peanut butter and marshmallow fluff. I won’t bother to describe any further.
A bunch of you are already heading to the car to get to Walmart and buy marshmallow fluff. Use any bread you wish, but the less healthy the better. Discreetly toss in a small handful of chocolate chips and you have a concoction that is probably against the law.
As I write this, my wife has made me a delicious dinner of pierogies. She is having a sandwich. She is having peanut butter and jelly. Not jam, chutney or preserves. Plain old grape jelly.
I don’t like peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Never have. I think it’s the jelly. If you have ever made one of these sandwiches, you know how hard it is to get what is basically a wiggly sauce on a piece of bread. You spend most of the time ripping the bread apart and cursing. No fruit spread is worth that much attention.
My wife says you have to use a spoon. A spoon is not for spreading anything, according to the basic laws of utensil operation. If a spoon is for spreading, what is the butter knife for?
You can’t really cut anything with a butter knife, and if you aren’t supposed to spread anything difficult with it, it winds up the stepchild of the cutlery drawer, much like the rubber pads that are supposed to help with opening bottles and those little spears shaped like little ears of corn on the cob that you used once.
I once used one of the rubber pads for removing a shotgun barrel and since we only have three of the little corn cobs, they are rendered useless. You apparently need one for each end of the corn. I tried using one and it didn’t work well and I dropped a hot ear of corn onto the cat.
Tomorrow, at lunch time, I am going to open my lunch box and take out a sandwich. It might be ham or turkey or roast beef. It might be shrimp salad or tuna salad. It might even be a fluffernutter.
It will be in a Tupperware container to keep it fresh and it will be sliced diagonally, as the sandwich gods intended. Only a neanderthal cuts a sandwich straight across at the middle. The triangular halves are much easier to hold.
There might be crisp and cool lettuce and some cheese. Light mayo or a honey mustard. If I’m feeling bold, a horseradish sauce.
Sit next to me. I might share my sandwich. That’s why you cut them in halves.
Sandwiches, folks, are the meals for friends.
Baltimore native Joe Weaver is a husband, father, pawnbroker and gun collector. From his home in New Bern, he writes on the lighter side of family life.