The Lunch Encounter

The only time I ever made them – sealing the jars to be put up for the winter – I ate every last pickle before the week was out. Can’t resist a pickle.

What is this?

This is a rich sardine.

Not too long ago I had a sardine sandwich. At a restaurant. It was a very nice restaurant in Williamsburg, New York, the Roebling Tea Room. The Roebling Tea Room is a sensible place – sensibly excellent bread, sensibly savvy wine and beer list, sensibly comfort-worn – and not at all fussy, as the name implies.

Finding typically maligned foods such as sardines and liverwurst on a menu ups the mercury on my thermometer, so I warmed to the place instantly. Honestly, sardines are so rarely served around here, I had to have them. Anything that is delectable straight out of the can is improved upon immensely with simplicity. The sardines on my sandwich shared their buttered bread with radishes and eggs. Old fashioned modernity. Uh huh.

Foraging for fish? Fish in a tin? Look! For the Cupboard, Fish in Tins, Just Waiting for a Fork. These are the folks who bring it: Cole’s

The Times does not have a corner on the cravin’-dines market. The Washington Post has a hankering for Cole’s sardines, too.

I feel friendly towards sardines. They are tin can pals. All you need is a bit of bread, any old bread. There are nice ones out there, just looking for a good home. They aren’t noisy, won’t wreck your furniture, and they don’t take up much area in the pantry. The tins click into a satisfying stack on their deeply grooved edge.

Photo by Mike at ComicsDC

Bologna and Bonanza, are those words not interchangeable??

It’s a Bologna Bonanza!

It’s a Bonanza Bologna!

See, looks swell either way.

Don’t know about you, but my global positioning system has Biscuitville in flashing lights. 

Heard from a reliable, bologna-loving source that a bologna biscuit is not all that. I admit, the bologna seems not salty enough to carry the biscuit burden. And I have to wonder, do you spread it with Country Crock and grape jelly? Took a little drive from the east coast to Texas on my own, stopping along the way on backroads for meals. Spent a lot of time pondering the application of Country Crock and grape jelly until finally I broke down and asked the waitress. “You put it on your sausage biscuit, honey,” she said.

Aha. You got yer fat, yer salt, yer sweet, and your bread to carry it. A perfect union of flavors. Lick the napkin for umani.

Photo by Mike at ComicsDC

Summer eating for me as a child meant flicking canned peas from the macaroni salad into my lap, lowering my knees to drop the peas to the deck, where I could toe them through the cracks to the patio below.

And peanut butter books for the squirrels. Take a stiff piece of paper, about 3 x 6, fold it in half, use a pen to give it an eyecatching title such as Nut Tales, spread the inside with peanut butter and hold it out, silently, to a squirrel.  Our midwestern squirrels were tamish, so they would snatch up a book quick as a wink, then perch and “read”, within plain sight. I tried it here once. Crazy city squirrels grabbed their books and raced up to the far reaches of the trees. Apparently urban squirrels prefer to read in seclusion.

“Would you like something to read?”
Dylan Thomas

No mention of peanut butter books on peanutbutterboy‘s blog although there is a very terrifying Baked Peanut Butter Corn Dog and other atrocities. One can assume it is very bad manners indeed to blogbash, particularly since I live in a glass house, being in love with the Hoctodog, a true sausage atrocity.

While I can get hot under the collar over a hotdog, I don’t feel strongly about peanut butter until it is gilding a banana. Under those circumstances….

No no no.

Mais oui.

Boneville

If you had this cheese sandwich on you, you’d be toasty. At least a few square inches of you would be toasty.

This picture is horribly unappetizing and, believe me, I tried to doctor it via photoshop, but was blocked by the Craft Bits site. Their loss, I was going to make the bread look crispy and the cheese gooey. The thought of chewing through a bit of knitting does make my tongue itch.

Did I tell you that knitting is subversive?!?! Bah, I knew it!

Graffiti Knitting!

Should you need your arm further twisted take a lookie here:
ART REVIEW | ‘RADICAL LACE & SUBVERSIVE KNITTING’
Flair and Flash, Not Frumpiness

Hotcha! Where’s my dang needles?!? I’m feelin’ anarchic!

Another page in the book, written in the universally understood language of sandwiches. Pittsburgh is sandwich central, the axis of eating.

My Ngoc serves Banh Mi in season, with a grill set up on the sidewalk. You can’t beat an outdoor kitchen.

I owe this story to the Sublime Miss M. Thank you.

Had a gathering of the neighborhood renegade insurgency and put our platform in place via Cause and Effect from the White Stripes.

First came an action
And then a reaction
But you can’t switch ’em around
For your own satisfaction.

I heard on the radio (so it must be true) that knitting is subversive. That to me translates as anything that you do yourself, that is done for the pleasure of doing it, that is not a response to marketing and acquisition, is subversive. I buy that vantage, so to speak, cause I didn’t have to buy it. Subversion is free.

In every complicated situation
There’s the human relation
Makin’ sense of it all
Takes a whole lot of concentration.

You do have to shell out a bit for brats, buns and burning.

When you people robbin’ Peter
Don’t blame Paul
Can’t take the effect
And make it the cause

Stone soup, also known as button, ax, wood or nail soup, makes the best feast. It ain’t free, but gives the illusion.

You can’t take the effect
And make it the cause
I didn’t rob a band
Because you made up a law

The beacon of yellow mustard. The light of the moon reflected off the bottle and gave our table a lovely, supernatural glow. Carbon footprint reduction right there.

Well you can’t blame the baby
For her pregnant ma
And if there’s one of these
Unavoidable laws
It’s that you can’t take the effect
And make it the cause

Oh, just obliterated that reduction of carbon footprint. Scale tipping up again.

I guess you have to have a problem
If you want to invent a contraption
First you cause a train wreck
Then you put me in traction.

Making your own music?! Now that’s subversive. Didn’t spend a cent and that ain’t all.

I ain’t sayin’ I’m innocent
In fact the reverse
But if you’re headin’ to the grave
You don’t blame the hearse

Yup, no kidding. If you’re gonna shake things up, you gotta take it upon yourself. A little Friday night front porch DIY. An evening of “hesitatin’, aggravatin’ beauty”. Amen.

 Blithe She-Does-Her-Best-to-Suit-Herself Correspondent Cynthia reports:

We didn’t have too many sandwiches in New Orleans, but there were two that were noteworthy.

When we got to New Orleans around 2:30 in the afternoon, I was starving. It was a difficult time to arrive because any restaurants on my “list” were done serving lunch and not yet open for dinner. So, we headed to the Acme Oyster House for a po- boy. Yum Yum. You forget how good those sandwiches are. Mine was called a “Peace Maker” –fried oysters & shrimp, tabasco mayo, lettuce & tomato. *(see side note below about WHY we arrived at 2:30 without having eaten any lunch)

No idea why it is called a peace maker — isn’t a peace maker a pistol? Jon and I each polished off one of these, plus a beer or two. Then we sure didn’t need anything else to eat that day.

 A few days later I was hanging out alone shopping on Magazine Street. There are some areas of Magazine Street that have a lot of restaurants, but the area where I happened to be at lunch time was a bit short on food. I was trying to figure out what to do when I happened upon Stein’s Deli and walked in to check it out.

What a great place! A jewish/italian deli with tons of great sandwiches, plus picnic tables indoors and out to sit down and eat.  I almost hate to admit it but I had a vegetarian sandwich (chedder, swiss, provolone, lettuce, tomato, red onion, avocado, cucumber and artichokes with a lemony dressing on a house-made ciabatta).

I had eaten oysters and pork for two days straight and was in need of something “lighter.” And it was, crisp, refreshing, and delicious.

 The fellow across the table happened to inquire why I was photographing my sandwich, so I explained the blog. He said that he had quite a few recommendations for sandwich places in New Orleans, so hopefully he’ll email some in. I believe (but am not quite sure) that the guy and the sandwich were both named “Dan.”

 Anyway, he was a New Orleans fire fighter who told me about rescuing folks after Katrina. He estimated that he helped bring in more than 250 people by boat the first day. Quite a story. And, he allowed me to take his photo (nice lookin guy AND sandwich!)

So, two great NOLA sandwich experiences.

I got the vicarious pleasure – very vivid – and two new places for the Lunch Encounter directory. The Acme had slipped my mind. Stein’s is all new to me. They do know a thing or two about sandwiches in New Orleans. Mm-hmm. Thank you, Cindy.

*An aside about the first sandwich…
So, Jon and I arrived at the airport at 8:00 a.m. and went to get our boarding passes. We got the passes, but couldn’t check our bags. We got someone to help us who said, “oh, you’re having trouble because you can’t check your bags more than 4 hours before a flight.”
“But our flight is at 9:55,” we protested.
“That’s right” he said, “9:55 p.m.”
We took in the fact that our Saturday in NO had just disappeared before our eyes. Then we started making arrangements to fly standby. I think we were both too pained to eat anything as we waited to see if we’d get on the 11:45 flight.
Well, we got on and ate the 8-10 pretzels that you get on flights these days, and arrived famished.
I believe this is the only time that Jon has booked tickets without explicit instructions from me. It probably won’t happen again for quite some time.

Photo by Dan Whipps
Styling by Meself

I know, I know, I know, looks like a lot of rice and not enough olives, tomatoes, feta, oil, and all the other good wet, salty stuff. Three guesses who the client was. Right. USA Rice Federation. I do think the shot is pretty and love the bread and pinked paper. It sure is tidy and they like it like that.

Something else I did for the same outfit. It’s all about the rice. Rice is nice.

(See the steam?)