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But sure can gush about their actuality. He’s young and he’s hungry.

Sandwich Bored

 
Calvin: Off to the starboard! A mushrooooom! WAAUGHH IT’S AN ATTACKING MUSHROOM! And graaaavyyyyy, slopping over the gunwales! AAAAAHHHH! STICKY! Sploop! Splop! YAHHHH! We’re going dowwwwwwn. The gravy seeps in on all sides. The mushrooms circle closer and closer, sensing distress in the waves above. Another gruesome kill.

These meat ads are getting to me.

Meat landscapes and horizons here and here and here.

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Oh brother, I am late with this Mother’s Day post. Well, I am a mother, and glad for it, and spent the day with my mother, and with being a mother. Am, with, being, that’s what it’s all about – all the in-betweens, all the getting theres, all the becomings. Deeper, rather than wider. Lay those tracks, spread those roots, build that foundation. And see what sprawls, spreads, reaches, blooms, thrives. To be a good mom, you need short toes (so they do not get stepped on figuratively), a deep lap and a strong tap root.

 No chickens or eggs about it, you have to be a mother before you can be a mother-in-law.

And before you can be a Mother-in-Law Sandwich, you have to be the mother of all corn dishes, a tamale. What goes in a Mother-in-Law sandwich is a tamale generously laced with hot sauce. So generous that the tamale could (almost) be mistaken for a Chicago red hot.

The sublime Miss M gave me the lowdown on this southside sanny: It gets steamed and then it gets bunned. It won’t *POP* when you bite it. It’ll bite when you pop it – in your mouth.

Hot Tamales. Oh Mama! Hot Tamales in a bun. Makes the imagination reel with wonder. This sandwich sets my world in a new orbit, a new orbit flung wide powerfully by…. BREAD. A tamale is just a tamale until you surround it with yeast-raised, wheat-structured, since-the-dawn-of-time, BREAD. Yes, a simple hot dog roll. Yes, just that, a plain, subtle (to put it nicely) hot. dog. roll.

Then they tart it up royally. All mama’s should be accessorized so, to the point of groaning.

The Great American Sandwich Search continues.
On Oprah. Oprah sent her best friend Gayle on a national sandwich dot-to-dot. Lucky girl.

Gayle King, Oprah’s best friend, visits the superlative American sandwich joints chosen by Esquire, eats, chats and rates. Gayle’s snap shots are a fright, about like mine, but she does have swoopy TV hair (probably how she got the gig).

When did sandwiches become such stars? Is it me, or is this celebritization recent?

Okay, hard to swallow any rating given by a woman who
a)doesn’t like lobster
b)never heard of cole slaw on a sandwich
c)sports a big puffy toque, gingerly topping her rock-hard do

Huh? This is the person out in the field eating sandwiches? And rating them?
2 1/2 points for Lobster Grilled Cheese (rather than a top rating of 5) because she doesn’t like lobster. Anyone slinging this kind of power ought to be versed in the difference between “I don’t like it”, and “It’s not good”. Big difference. You’re on the wrong beat, lady.

Perhaps you were home mid-day yesterday and caught Oprah’s Sandwich Showdown on your set, if not, take a look here.
To be frank, celebrity chef anything gets on my nerves. Biting the hand that feeds me, one of my preferred snacks.

CLICK CLICK CLICK the links. I mean it!!!

I’ve been put on the trail of Mother-In-Law Sandwiches by The Sublime Miss M. She held out a tamale for sniffing and turned me loose.

The Mississippi Delta Hot Tamale Trail

The Yayhoos said it and they meant it, 07-oh-chicago(pssst….click and lissstennnn)

Southern Foodways Alliance Camp Chicago
Did somebody say “camp”?! I want to go to camp.

I can barely wrap my mind around all these connections. Oh the synapses!
Chicago, Tamales, Sandwiches, The Yayhoos, Mississippi, Mothers-in-Law (you can’t have too many!)

The second, the absolute nanosecond, I read about Mother-In-Law Sandwiches, curiosity was KILLING ME. What is it? What is it? What is it? Think tamales in a hot dog bun. Fas-cin-ATE-ing! Hott! Hott! Hott!

MR TOAST*

Beginning to think I need a blog subset: Soally Toast or Oanly Toast or Toast Aloan.

*Thank you, Ellen, founding member of Knit Witz and amazing toast sleuth.

Countdown to Hog Doug’s! In just 12 days I will be rounding that Chicago corner for a meatish marvel, a sausage sensation, a two-handed tubular tastetreat. Anticipating a delicious appetite-quenching, hot-doug device.

I may call ahead on my handheld device to make sure they are open, but once there I will not have any hands free for snapshots. I will be eating. Two handedly.

Alacritous Chicago correspondent Bottle Rocket(s) fan Linda has been fanning the flames and whipping the Hot-Doug’s-seeking-brush-fire that is me into a full blown inferno:

finally got mom over to hot doug’s for her bday.
score! she’s already talking about coming back.

still drooling just THINKING about it,
linda

She could not stop. Can ya blame her?!?!? so she HAD to add this:

For those who wish to learn some useful german
phrases, there is an excellent primer on a tableside
wall at Hot Doug’s. “My Favorite German Sausage
Expressions” helpfully translates german into the
literal and figurative meanings. Don’t let anyone
tell you encased meat isn’t good for you. This gratis
mealtime education is just one benefit of fine sausage
dining.

Spiel nicht die beleidigte Leberwurst!

Game plan: Lighten up (spiel nicht die beleidigte Leberwurst) for, oh say about 12 days, and then then then “heavy-down”. When I exit Hot Doug’s gravity will absolutely, positively, definitely have the upper hand. It is, after all, the law.

(when you come, allow for at least a half hour wait at
the door, and that goes double if it’s good weather!
just sayin’. come prepared to sidle up for a while
with other tube dog lovin’ folk), she cautions, sagely.

Baconlicious.

Can I fix you a coupla slices of buttered toast pressed around bacon and a fried egg, honey? Love those browny, burny bits of egg scrap left in the frypan.

Watching the sun go down over Green Bay one summer night – it’s beautiful up there in Fish Creek at the tip of Wisconsin’s thumb – with one of my all time favorite people, Bob Swanson, of the braided white beard and unquenchable urge to cook and bake. He would fill his kitchen with lingonberry giftas, mandelbrot, limpa bread, sour cream donuts, Swedish potato sausage…. Whether there were adequate appetites around or not.

So… we were sitting on the stone wall, bumping the backs of our heels on the stones and watching rock-skipping kids turn to silhouettes, and naming the tree-black islands in the bay. Just as the sun touched down on that cold, clear water Bob said. “See the steam?”

I heard the hiss, too.

This just in:

What kind of sandwich did you get? It looked like pastrami. Was it good and could you finish it?

Whoopsie. Oversights abound in my Primanti post. Forgive me. I was discombobulated.

It was good, yes. Finishing it was not a problem. More a comment on my appetite and capacity than on the size of the sandwich. The former, huge, the latter, huge. Asked the waitress about what was most popular, for perspective, and she was vague, non-committal. Corned beef seemed like the thing, to my addled mind, and I believe it was, although, who knows, it coulda been the knockwurst that delivers the KO.

Fries inside pose a ketchup dilemma. Ketchup on corned beef?!? You don’t know how bad I want to delete those words. Can’t look at them together, let alone eat them – the words OR the foods. Ack no. But the fries. The fries. The fries. Vigorous shaking of the hot sauce and pepper. Oh! On to something here. On!

A friend from Pittsburgh asked me later, “Did you put hot sauce and pepper on it?” I’m psychic, doncha know?!