Category Archives: Uncategorized

Why, then the world’s mine oyster,
Which I with sword will open.
— William Shakespeare, The Merry Wives of Windsor

So many sandwiches, so little time.

Cowgirl Creamery
Le Matin de Paris
Cosmopolitan Bakery
Moti’s Falafel Stand

~~~~WARNING WARNING WARNING~~~~
~~~~CUTE KID STORY AHEAD – READ AT YOUR OWN PERIL~~~~

Pretty excited about eating three good meals with my son this week. Three meals that were almost adult. Cornbread, for one, was part of a dinner. Cornbread! What a coup. A meatball sub for another (his idea). The sub, it was not exactly oozing garlic and olive oil, but it was a mess and the meatballs were not round. Cred in that.

Sub lunch conversation:
Him: Mom, when I grow up I want to be a hunter.
Me: Okay. What will you hunt for?
Him: Meat.
Me: Any special kind of meat?
Him: Animal meat.

Until that time he is busy doodling on toast with jam. Posting this on my blog? His idea. Mom, you can post this on your sandwich blog!

I stand corrected. Kitsy Starling has taken me down a notch and rightly so, from the sounds of things.

Talking about The Toothpick: Technology and Culture, by Henry Petroski

and referencing Which Came First…

Kitsy’s words (posted in a comment, but that does not seem adequate):
Check it out; the interviewer was a little off. There are no footnotes in this book, per se. There are endnotes, which is a very different thing in the publishing world.

If there’s anything Petroski and his books aren’t, it’s pedantic or stuffy.

Oh, H.E. Double Hockey Sticks

can you eat in 60 seconds?

Pickle eater and comic book reader (read “comic book fanatic”) Mike Rhode alerted me to this pickley extravaganza.

IN CELEBRATION OF THE 50TH ANNIVERSARY OF

PickleLicious

763 River Road
Teaneck, NJ 07666

CONTEST

Sunday, November 18th 2007, 12-4pm

How many pickles can you eat in 60 seconds?

Grand prize: 1 quart of pickles every week for a year

Goody bag for each contestant (I wonder what’s in it???)

Hoboken Eddie will be in the house!

Plenty of sampling – storewide!

THANKSGIVING SPECIAL

20% OFF at
http://www.picklelicious.com
with any purchase worth $30 or more.

Enter the following discount code while
you are at the “your shopping cart” page:
holidaypickles

One coupon per customer. Valid until 11/11/2007.

Ya, tak!!

Sandwiches transfigured = Smørrebrød

Pay special note to ~ Enjoy an authentic Danish lunch of open-faced sandwiches ~ because this understated phrase belies the amazing array of gorgeous, delicious, hand-constructed smørrebrød being offered by women in red aprons this Saturday. This is a one-a-year opportunity. Only.

The human torch is not for you, my friend.

Spicy Sandwich Built for a Superhero

Milwaukee strikes again, with Glorioso’s Market on Brady Street.

Like I said, we might get some chickens. We would need a variance. The chickens would lay, with a signalling cackle, and we’d relieve them of their responsibility. Next thing you know, egg sandwich coming right up!

Yes, yes, I know this is not an egg sandwich. But I was in Milwaukee where it’s okay to actually sit down to eat your breakfast. And I don’t mean in a car, while commuting.

DC is not a breakfast town. Too ambitious here, too fast, too gotta-get-up-gotta-go-to-work. You gotta travel if you want your eggs on a plate.

Other spots, they know what to do. My theory has something to do with the sad fact that DC did not come up with much industry other than government. NO WAY you’re gonna find a diner here, puffing out clouds of bacon vapor in the midst of a sea of warehouses at midnight.

Anyhoo, I wasn’t working, cause I wasn’t home, and I wasn’t eating breakfast in the dead of a.m., more in it’s waning moments. In Milwaukee. Around 11. As in a.m. Time it just right and you can have breakfast AND lunch. Simultaneously. Very efficient. Those government dudes would approve.

I do know of one place in DC. (Okay, there is more than one) that serves a superb breakfast. Market Lunch at Eastern Market is top notch for breakfast and, if you’re clever, you can get the last order of buckwheat blueberry pancakes and the first order of bbq. It’s a gamble. A bit of Saturday morning excitement. Yep, start her off with salty, squishy bbq on a bun and finish up with syrup drips and berry bits in your beard.

What about Milwaukee again? And hey, what about them sandwiches?

This. Mmmm. This is a French Dip at Benji’s. Benji’s is the deli I would like to find across the street from where I stand, no matter where I stand. Sunny and hushed with molded plastic booths, friendly, low-key service, and horseradish on tap.

Have you had a French Dip? My soul dip experience was on the other side of the kitchen door, at another place in Wisconsin, where the chef did not have a deli-fied bone in his ample body. The “au jus” (huh?) was very brown and very salty and was very distantly related to a cow. At Benji’s the meaty juice has a tasty swirl of fat orbs atop it. It was tricky to dip that big ole sandwich in that narrow cup, so I sloshed it onto the bread instead.

Corned beef at Benji’s is just that. Corned beef, sliced casually, on regular rye. Plain. That takes confidence. Corned beef at Benji’s is all that.

The egg dish? Hoppel Poppel. Actually Super Hoppel Poppel.
That’s the last I’ve seen of breakfast on a plate in a couple weeks. Back to the grind now. Scraping crumbs off my carseat.

One egg sandwich coming right up, and put legs on it.

Frank, a bear, and Ernest, an elephant, specialize in taking care of small businesses while the owner is away. When Mrs. Miller hires them to run her diner for three days, they assure her that they will take good care of it. Then Frank decides they must learn diner lingo before they begin. For an order of a hot dog with ketchup and a dish of Jell-O, Ernest yells, “Paint a bow-wow red, and I need a nervous pudding.” And for a vanilla milk shake with an egg in it, to go, Frank calls out for a “white cowmake it cackle and let it walk.”

The club sandwich or the frill?

Cellophane is oddly fascinating, too

In bookstores now!
The Toothpick

“The Toothpick,” …is the work of a maddeningly sober pedant who is anything but a crowd pleaser.
Joe Queenan for The New York Times

Now there’s a book I don’t wish I wrote, but still… it’s got me thinking. About sandwich periphernalia. Frilly toothpicks, cutters,

(girlie ones)

(graphic ones)

and sandwich keepers (“your best friend at work”).

How do I live without this?

Vaguely related thought: A radio interview with Henry Petroski was introduced with a few words about the book, including a mention of its copious footnotes. Toothpicks juxtaposed with footnotes, ick. I once had a dentist named Dr. Footer and found that a bit disgusting, too.

Photo by Renee Comet
Always thought an electric knife was ridiculous…until I became a food stylist. You feel stupid with one in hand, and you pray no one is watching, but ~ wow ~ not a crumb is disturbed. Like the parting of the Red Sea, those jiggety-jig double blades divide a sandwich with supreme efficacy. Got this handy retro gadget at a yard sale. Still on the look-out for a back-up.