Having a slow Saturday this holiday weekend at the Lunch Encounter. It is just too beautiful to be inside. So here I am, radio playing, counter spanking clean, orders placed, now what? Let’s clean the walk-in!

Rooting around in the basement, I came upon this post that sprung from a styling gig I had involving Oreo cookies. Wondering about the origin of the word Oreo, I had done a bit of research.

Oreo comes from the Greek root for appetizing as in orexin or orexigenic (appetite stimulating). And while I was at it, online and all, I wandered, uncovering Judith G Klausner, her amazing Oreo art and incredible embroidered toast. Toast!

I felt the need to blog (translate as “blurt), and to alert the Snitters of Knitwitz. Suits–Herself–Cindy, a snitter who does not knit, grabbed the thread and followed it to thisiscolossal.com where she encountered this open-faced sandwich.

Beauty is often found in the most unlikely and overlooked places.

Artist Judith G. Klauser of Somerville finds her inspiration in small, everyday objects that easily recede into the background. In the past, she’s worked with insects, baby teeth and fingernails. She also works with food. Specifically, processed food.

In a series called “From Scratch,” Klauser uses Oreo cookies to make finely detailed cameos (she sculpts the frosting with toothpicks, pins and a sculpture stick); cereal, for her elaborate cross-stitch samplers; toast, as a base for embroidery and condiments, such as ketchup and mustard; and paint, to create wallpaper.

I’ve done some experiments making silhouettes using American cheese and decided I wanted to do something more detailed…the cheese can take it. My experiments involved letting the cheese sit out, unrefrigerated, to see what happened to the slices. It turns out they actually behave like Shrinky Dinks. If you leave American cheese out for months, it shrinks and hardens. It’s a little alarming in a food substance, but it certainly works well for me.

Read more here.

Judith G Klausner is a genius, a brilliant food artist, and I want to be her.

Why Do Sandwiches Taste Better When Someone Else Makes Them?
By Daniel Kahneman
New York Times, October 2, 2011

When you make your own sandwich, you anticipate its taste as you’re working on it. And when you think of a particular food for a while, you become less hungry for it later. Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University, for example, found that imagining eating M&Ms makes you eat fewer of them. It’s a kind of specific satiation, just as most people find room for dessert when they couldn’t have another bite of their steak. The sandwich that another person prepares is not “preconsumed” in the same way.

From Sorry-Birds Ellen
Thank you! What would I do without you? I shudder to imagine.

Not to be snarky, but is snarky a word?  Let’s say it is. Not to be snarky, but, duh. Really? Don’t ya know that food tastes so much better when someone else makes it? Actually, I don’t always feel that way. After traveling, I like to MAKE MY OWN FOOD.

In a daily drone, done-working, drudgery situation, I want food that I have never seen or touched or smelled. Not that I would eat dinner from 7-11.

I get the “preconsumed” thing, as disgusting as that sounds. Like something a baby bird might eat after momma bird regurgitates it. Ack. Did I just type regurgitate?

At a party recently, standing around in the kitchen with a bunch of “food people”, chefs and stuff, I said, unfortunately, “Aren’t you just so sick of food?” Hahaha. Awk-ward. They all said, with quizzically furrowed brows, “Uh…no.” Whoopsie. I was the only one still working lots and lots of hours, with my hands in food. Smelling it, feeling it, preconsuming it.

Fix me a sandwich, wouldya honey? And make it a surprise.

GOOD

You will click on GOOD if you know what’s good for you.
Funny, I just had the Bobbie at Capriotti’s in Wilmington,DE last week.

Thank you, Michele, for the cool link!

Once upon a time, in my fantasy life, Teddy and I lived in Madison, Wisconsin,

and certain rules applied, my rules.
1. We could eat at Lazy Jane’s any time we felt like it.

2. No one was allowed to use these phrases: broken family, intact family, or a child of your own.  Being PC was so in it was out and it meshed with Incorrect, so none  applied – correct, incorrect, discorrect, uncorrect, or just plain wrong. Or right. And everyone used their turn indicators. For right turns. And left turns.

3. A beauty salon  trust fund was awarded to me. UnLtd.

4. French fries and potato chips became super foods.

5. Video and computer games disappeared forever ~poof~ into vapor.

6. Big hot breakfasts were mandatory.

7. The human population, at large, recognized the genius of comic books.

8. Time stood still, for me only, while the world slept.

We lived in Madison, in complete denial about the sad state of certain aspects of the world,
and our ignorance was bliss.

We were in such a far left dream that we rounded the circle to being right

and we were similar to those who fear anything different,

in that we wanted to only be with people who seemed just like us.

And it felt good.

The fantasy, like most fantasies probably, was extremely flawed. For one thing, one huge thing, we couldn’t figure out who, if anyone, was just like us. Therein lay the rub. Fantasies always have a rub. Phew.

So we stayed. On the east coast, not the midwest. In occasionally blissful reality. The rules push us around and we bend. Living happily and daftly ever after.

Take it! No one has given it to you? Take it!

It’s there all around you, as breathable as air.

Breathable, edible, reliable.

Comfort is a commodity, about like diamonds. No market value without the artificial value bestowed upon it by, um, the market. It’s there.  You are swimming in it all day and night. Take it!

Oh yeah, by the way, I did the styling for this book, and took comfort in going to work, coming home and liking it. Robyn Webb, the author, reigns. Pure professional comfort. Peer comfort.

Maybe if I spent more time boasting and less time, uh, uh, uh, squinting over this laptop that is never on my lap cause I never sit anywhere other than my desk, I might make the kind of money that would make me think I could afford a monitor big enough to capture the image you see below – if you take the time to look – all at once, rather than in two parts.
Renee and I think we are artists because we haul a lot of stuff around and we have ruled out the possibility that we are in the construction business. By the way, I know that this image from Renee’s email BLAST relates peripherally to sandwiches, and peripherally only, but peripherally is good enough for me, in fact it is better than dead center. The periphery is where things get interesting and unpredictable and surprising. Spin me around and let centrifical force take me to the edge.

…I’d live over a deli.

Frank Rogers wrote it in 1978.

Do ya think this boy heard him? I would venture a guess at yes. Customize and survive.

If you’re gonna live above a deli, it won’t be here in Arlington, VA. Nosirree, Boris. Mixed use is forbidden* and delis do not exist. Not a proper deli at which a person could shake a salami. As far as living above a store goes, we like to keep things clean, conventional and zoned. It’s a double edged slicer.

Could we think a bit more out of the (big) box (store), people?

Like I said, when I rule the universe, there will be a corner store at every intersection – adjacent to a tavern, a deli in every neighborhood, and it’ll be a crazy, mixed up, exciting world to be in.

*Other than on major thoroughfares. I’ll give ’em that…

SUNdeVICH

We may be projecting, but the food traveler’s dream is to wander down an alley in a foreign country and discover a transporting restaurant that excels.

While SUNdeVICH is not in a foreign land, this new sandwich shop, situated in an unmarked carriage house down a Shaw alley, tastes like it is, with a menu of thick sandwiches inspired by cities around the world.

Read more here.

I am definitely projecting, and one of my dreams is to wander down an alley, doing nothing, as slowly as possible, in any country, foreign or otherwise, and discover a transporting food, which would be anything that I did not make myself and that did not come out of a package.

Reading about SUNdeVICH fills me top to tail, elbow to teakettle, soup to nuts, with longing, yearning, appetite, desire. Oh, for a dream to materialize, and soon.

Thank you Elle Kasey of Magniferous, a girl who can spot a “smokin’ hot rhinestone six-shooter pistol shirt” at 40 paces.

Loads of wiches between these pages. Bayou Bakery, 2 Amys, Sundevich…

Photos by Scott Suchman, Styling by Moi! Mwah!

Debbie Wahl,  shared this sandwich picture-story with me,which was featured in olive magazine.

Debbie is a food stylist and friend. Hooray! Stylist friends are few and far between for me, not like cook friends, who I can count on the hands and feet of myself and a biggish tribe. Stylists often work on their own. Or rather, they are the only “food professional” in the room. It can be lonely, for me anyway. I miss – after all these millions of years – working with cooks, and talking shop with cooks.

“Do you watch the Food Network?”, is something I am asked  often. Uh…no. If I am  not feeling lonely for the camaraderie of cooks, the Food Network will make me so.

Count your blessings that there is not an entire TV station devoted to your profession.  Or rather, devoted to an absurdly skewed, fluffed, puffed and buffed version of your profession. You too could learn to be disgusted by your work. Thank you broadcast television.

I apologize, from the deepest, darkest, sweetest chasm of my soul, for the contributions I have made to the celebritization of food. Some of it – the celebritization, not my contributions – has been and is good.

It is nice for chefs to stand in the sunshine sometimes.  I know, too, not to throw the baby out with the bathwater, or to 86 the celebrity chef with the sour stock. Some of them are smart, and irreverent, and have a talent for…cooking. Thanks to those who throw a respectable spotlight on the rest of us poor slobs. Heaven knows, it’s no fun  to be seen as a greasy-aproned servant.

olive is the stylish, monthly magazine for food lovers who enjoy cooking, eating out and foodie travel. We aim to show you how to eat imaginatively and well without spending a fortune. In every issue you’ll find 100+ easy recipes, great-value restaurants and bargain travel ideas and recipes from around the world.

olive

Kinda like the looks of this magazine and think that the name “olive” daringly narrows possible subscribers. “Foodie travel” turns me off. Course I cringe at the word foodie. Would you like it if “ie” were the ending for the name of your profession?