a belly full of sandwich and a heart full of song

I like to talk about my past life a lot, it’s indulgent, is it indulgent? I’m sorry, it’s indulgent, but it a) makes me feel like an “interesting person” who has lived “multiple lives” despite being “a person for whom life has been pretty easy”, b) it reminds me that i am capable of getting myself out of miserable circumstances, and c) it’s funny to think of myself in pencil skirts bought at Target and sad little sleeveless blouses from the Banana Republic sale rack and a thing we call “sensible pumps.” In college I used to go to networking sessions with investment banks put on by the business school and feel bad about not having any questions to ask the people in the suits; I never thought maybe that meant I should have switched majors yesterday? I was thirty minutes late to my Deloitte interview because I wrote the time down wrong!!!! Freudian slip much????? Anyways, after graduating I worked in consulting for a minute, and it was terribly boring, but one fun thing they let me do was order the lunches for these weekend-long meetings where we’d test different functionalities of Bank of America’s corporate banking platform. Ha ha! I loved this lil’ task so much I put it on my resumé when applying to my first job in food. Say whatever you want about my professional background but this girl knows how to order sandwiches for a crowd.

The Vegetarian Sandwich Option is always a sad sort of thing. It’s usually either “hummus and stuff” or “lettuce and stuff” or if you’re lucky “cheese and cucumbers and then a few tomatoes that aren’t too pale”, which really isn’t so bad, in a minimalist way. I think back then we got cheese and cucumbers, but there were always chips aplenty, and all of it was free. The saddest is when the bread is dry, or your sandwich is 90% bread and 10% filling, because honestly my mouth can’t even produce enough saliva to deal with that. I’m not afraid of carbs but come on.

I’m in Maine this week, with mom and dad, and I got to “help” with the food shopping because I am occasionally “picky”, a nice shorthand for “fussy”. We all have the ways that we like to eat on vacation, specifically in a vacation house, like you don’t normally eat Lay’s potato chips every week at home, but here you need at least two bags on hand at all times. Same with sandwiches; I’d argue that a sandwich is best eaten in a bathing suit, maybe with salt water still in your hair, bag of chips within arm’s reach. It’s all very lowbrow-but-then-you-add-some-local-produce.

I feel very strongly about a few things: sandwiches are best on untoasted bread, unless it is a club sandwich, or a grilled sandwich, and in the latter case it’s not even toasted bread, okay. You need something soft to envelop your fillings and squish beneath your grubby fingers. The best meatless sandwich filling is 20% cheese, 30% egg, 40% vegetable, and 10% dressing. I’m making these numbers up as I type but they sound about right. And nothing about this should be fancy. Sliced deli cheese, boiled egg, cucumbers and tomato and crunchy lettuce, Hellman’s, Gulden’s spicy mustard. Salt and dress your vegetables before you layer them; this might be the most important bit. Things are going to fall out; you accept this. Many Lays on the side. A roll of paper towels; no linen.
 

I had this illustration in my head all week of a frilly little vegetable sandwich, I knew it was in a cookbook from the past few years and I couldn’t remember which, but it kept popping into my head as I rustled through the fridge, sliced and dressed my cucumbers, shingled my eggs, squished my fingers around this unwieldy slab of bits. Finally I remembered it’s from April Bloomfield’s A Girl And Her Greens (which, lol, I worked on but don’t have a copy of; it’s very good; you should buy a copy from your local independent bookseller or whatever). She calls it a “Salad Sandwich”, which is so cute and perfectly April. Just imagine her saying it in a British accent! Have you ever listened to her say “Marcella”? You might cry.

Here’s the recipe on Yahoo (RIP). The accompanying photo of her eating it is great but not as good as that grid from her first book of her dressing and then eating a Caesar salad; very extra. It’s quite similar to what I’ve been doing all week, only sometimes I’ll just toss my cucumbers and tomatoes in salad dressing, and I don’t use onions, but I might start. I add cheese and I don’t make my own salad cream. I use sliced white bread from the store; I think as long as it’s soft and the slices aren’t too thin, you’re fine. I snuggle my sandwich onto a plate with a big pile of chips (Frito-Lay, please sponsor my content) and once I get halfway through the sandwich, I start wedging chips inside it, because we’re on vacation after all, and this isn’t the sort of thing you do at home. Or maybe it is! Maybe it should be. Anyways, it's summertime, give your sandwiches some respect.

A few things to read:

Ha ha, no, I haven’t published anything recently.

Are you subscribed to Claire’s tinyletter yet? ARE YOU.

Here’s a nice poem-a-day tinyletter I’ve been enjoying.
The photos in this profile of Joanne the Scammer are !!!!!!

Here’s Gaby on the fear that comes along with running alone as a woman.

Here’s a short story from an excellent new collection from Leopoldine Core that I loved.

This profile of Jonah Hill is very good profile-writing.

This might be the most perfect musical number from Crazy Ex-Girlfriend????

This poem about cake ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh

I feel guilty about not watching gymnastics,

Marian