The Lunch Encounter

If it’s worth caring about, it’s worth carrying, and if it’s worth carrying, ya need something to carry it IN. Something cute. It it don’t fit, force it. My motto. Food these days. Not cut for a Chow Wagon. Sartorially unsuitable. You’ll have to make a painful choice cause that artisanal stuff is not (hate this word) baggie shaped.

Now I remember a funny old (non)joke joke.

Question: Do you walk to school or carry your lunch? (Delivery tip – do not pause while reading.)

Lunch Box Museum
The River Market Antiques and Art Center
3226 Hamilton Rd.
Columbus GA 31904

Operated by Allen and Bonnie Woodall.
Tel/Fax: 706-322-0516

A collection of over 3,500 colorful metal school children’s lunch boxes, starting with the Hopalong Cassidy model of 1951. All are now out of production, but are here available for purchase.

Admission Info: daily: Monday – Saturday, 9 am – 6 pm; Sunday, 12 – 6 pm

Founded by Allen M. Woodall, Jr., co-author of the leading collectors’ guide to metal lunch boxes. A major part of the collection was originally owned by Dr. Robert Carr.

Sincere gratitude to my mother for researching and assembling museum information. For more, lots and lots more, see Food History News.

Look here on VinylPulse for Pocket Pork Roll Call. Monster Pork. Yowza.

Stopping now cause I have exhausted this week’s paren quota.

The BLT ring was created as a collaboration between jewelry designer Carrie Weston and The Grateful Palate, the pork connoisseurs behind the Bacon of the Month Club. They stack on your slender digit and look fab! Oooooh!!!!

Hot dog cuff links for your Freedom cuffs.

Tubular foods pendant.

Hamburger rings. Mix and match with the BLT. Bacon burger anyone?

These trinkets make me ache for the thrill of purchase. Or better yet, the thrill of reception.

The Banh Mi of My Dreams

Click on the link to read Walter Nichols adoring banh mi story in the Washington Post from February 6. He chews and reminisces thusly,

At Nhu Lan, a one-table Vietnamese sandwich shop in a Falls Church, I take a bite of a “special combination” banh mi thit nguoi, which translates as “bread with meat cold cuts.” As I taste the pork liver pate, ham, cilantro and pickled radish, I close my eyes and I’m cruising the Mekong Delta at dawn in a funky long boat, as I did a dozen years ago, just south of the city of Can Tho.

I may live in the concrete lawn of Northern Virginia, but we do brag the 5th largest concentration of Vietnamese and Vietnamese Americans in the US. 37,000 or so. When I take a bite of “special combination” I close my eyes and am cruising urban-suburban America, an exotic voyage unto itself. Long stretches of shopsigns nearby where I cannot read a word. Roll down the window, turn your nose toward the wind and sniff hard.

When the French brought sandwiches to Vietnam they did right. Shoulda quit while they were ahead.

See my post about Song Que, first rate banh mi shop, here.

In the freezer case. Blech.

Conveniently repulsive.

The copy reads “Stop rummaging through the fridge for dinner. Start savoring it.” And what is so wrong with rummaging?!? That’s how you locate the good stuff. How else would I put my hands on those delicious odd scraps?

At the bottom, “Every dinner should feel this good.” Feel. Did they say feel? This pseudo-panini might make a good handwarmer.

And this copy reads, “People everywhere are talking about Smucker’s Uncrustables Sandwiches, and loving the taste. We think you’ll agree. Pick up a box in the freezer aisle…”

Since when do peanut butter and jelly sandwiches need to be simplified?

Yes, the taste probably does speak for itself. It shouts,

“DO NOT EAT ME!”

Bottle Rockets fans know sandwiches. They do. Reading their words I was sandwich-struck. The scales fell away and my eyes turned to mayo whites circling green-olive-slice pupils.

Recently the resurfacing sandwich thread on the Bottlerockets message board lauded Culver’s

preferred by some to Kopp’s, a beloved Milwaukee burger and custard bastion. When driving around Wisconsin with my mother she is constantly at my elbow, finagling a Culver’s lunch. Culver’s is a chain, doncha know. A chain of love. Custard love.

Sonofdad started the Culver’s thing:

I love Culver’s in Wisconsin. I know it’s a chain but I really like it. It’s better than Kopp’s. The Butter Burger, best hangover food EVER. The burgers are bigger than the buns. Yummy!

Amazing Bob:

I’m always up for a Rueben or a Pork Tenderloin from Culvers….not forgetting the cheese curds either…mmmmm.

Bharroun:

I could literally eat their Walleye sandwiches morning, noon & night.

Bharroun headed out for recon:

Did the Culver’s thing for lunch yesterday. Unfortunately, the Walleye fillet was smaller than previous years, and had a noticeably “river” taste about it.

The cheese curds, were, however, spectacular. As was the frozen custard.

They have Chicken Fried Steak on the menu now – that will be my choice next time around.

Chicken Fried Steak?!? A ha, Culver’s has outposts in Texas. The Walleye Sandwich is apparently a seasonal special. It has been theorized that it surfaces for Lent. I want some. May have to swear off east coast living for Lent in order to get it.

Floaty, wafting white bread. The stuff of blanched dreams. Gently puff-landing in the toaster slot and ~ poif, poif, pop, poof, popping ~ up again with its eyes peeled for butter and jam. Not brainy, this bread. For those who awake groggy and not looking for something with serious bite. More brainlike, impressionable. Press your thumb in and leave a smooth, dense doughmass, almost shiny.

Brains are softer than soft. Delicious too. You can hardly buy them though, cause skulls are hard. Mining a calf’s brain is not worth its price, apparently. A shame for your average grocery shopper like me. A brain is a terrible thing to waste.

Should you wake up talking (not naming any names here), your brain hankering for super-nutricells,
you find them in this. It will even penetrate a vacation-addled mind.

Or this. The orange soda will drive you.

Far from home in a no-sandwich zone.

It takes guts to open a restaurant. And extreme amounts of optimism. (Unless you have been sitting around a board room charting minutiae until every drop of soul is squeezed dry and your plan is airtight.) The folks running San Vicente Restaurant did not dream this up while in the palm of investors. While I don’t know the specifics, this place looks like a typical small business high wire act. They have poured their hearts into it and you feel like warmth when you walk in.

I was praying they would have some kind of sandwich so I’d have a springboard. To pupusas, horchata, tamales….

There are nice women at this adorable joint. They will take your money, cook your food, bring it to you, and chat with you about the Spanish soaps if you are in the know.

Look how sweet the dining room – the only room – is! It was all tarted up for Valentine’s day and I was touched by the touches.

San Vicente Restaurant serves breakfast. So snug here. I will intentionally stay out too late and drink too much so I can be comforted here. Could anyone’s kitchen cradle a hangover better than this?

The only thing that excites me about Wonderbread is the polka-dot package, but this Wonderbread is enhanced by the company it keeps. Corn. Corn in a bowl. Corn that was recently shucked. It seems unnecessarily mean to look down your nose at the bread. Anyway, hot off the flat-top it was tasty. Caramelly brown-speckled.

Hot bacon. Cold lettuce. They bring out the best in each other. Warmed my soul. Cooled my heels.

San Vicente Restaurant

“Best Salvadoran & Mexican Food on Columbia Pike”

2599 Columbia Pike

Arlington, VA 22204

(703)920-1130

7 am – 1 am Seven days a week

2008 Napa Valley Mustard Festival

In their words,

The Napa Valley Mustard Festival celebrates its fifteenth season of sensational events in the year 2008. This two month season, during which fields, vineyards, and hillsides are vibrant with wild mustard in bloom, celebrates the rich, unique agricultural and cultural bounty of Napa Valley – and YOU ARE INVITED!

Okay, the guy up above is standing among domesticated mustard plants, not the wild ones. I know, I know, but I would venture a guess that there will be mountains of domesticated mustard consumed in Napa while

mustard the condiment shares center stage with mustard in bloom throughout the season – appearing at events and in mustard recipes, from entrées to desserts.

Put that way – mustard the condiment – I hear rounds of thunder in the distance and have an urge to prostrate myself before the mighty seed. Powerful stuff. I don’t see much mention of sandwiches at this extravaganza – too plebian perhaps – but there is a dance! Looks a little rich for me, all the way around, although I could justify mustard flavored lipstick application and an ochre pedicure were I to be invited.

Slip a few jars of mustard swag into my bag while I’m at it…..

Valentine’s Day

Esquire Magazine has got me convinced they’re having more fun than the rest of us. I want me an Esquire dude cause he surely knows the best sandwich spots, the chicest bars, and how to pronounce pho.

My tips for modern man? It’s a billfold not a wallet, use moisturizer, and keep your sandwich away from my roses! (That ethylene-puffing tomato causes premature aging to flowers.)

The Best Sandwiches in America

The March issue will send you scrounging for your dob kit, muttering under your breath, “life is too short….”

By next Valentine’s Day I plan to have a few more greasy entries in my little black book of sandwiches!

Color my world orange.

(Can you believe Stockphoto put out their own line of chips, each one handstamped??)

My friend Miriam says she’s surprised that I like bbq potato chips. I don’t know that I like them exactly. I eat them. Umami makes me do it.

Umami, not my mommy, although my mother claims a person can survive on potato chips. After all, the potato famine would not have occurred had the Irish not become so dependent on potatoes, neglecting to grow much of anything else.

“Potatoes are a near perfect food”, claims the Idaho Potato Museum (well, they would, one would hope). And gift shop! I’ll bet they have snazzy souvenirs in there.

The US Department of Agriculture has stated that “a diet of whole milk and potatoes would supply almost all of the food elements necessary for the maintenance of the human body.” According to my professional opinion the missing elements are butter and salt. Mash em up and eat. 24/7.

Miriam adds this note,

I eat them probably if really desperate. They taste so phony with that sugar-salt thing which is most likely high fructose corn syrup.

Yes, delicious desperation. Boink! Nail on the head! And such purity of phoniness. Bingo!

I understand that bbq chips and cigarettes make a lethal combo, something to crave when in the mood for punishment. With a book. Top corner of every page smudged orange. The hangover headache would surely pack a wallop. An orange-additive-and-nicotine-thrashing.

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Make Herr’s Yours
Does that rhyme?

Make Her’s Yers looks better to me.