The Sandwich Diaries

It started out innocently enough.  A suggestion that, having had lunch out, rather than doing take-out, we’d just have a light snack.  “How about tuna sandwiches?  Fine, we have tuna. Open-faced patty melt?  No, I prefer grilled.  OK, then.” And thus it began – our “evening of discontent.”

I should point out that my wife is pretty flexible on most things, particularly after I’ve beaten her into submission in what she calls my “passive aggressive manner”.  Personally, I don’t see that – I just expect that everyone will just agree to compromise and do things my way.  It’s the best, most effective and efficient plan.  Every so often, though, someone with a misplaced sense of importance will propose an alternative.  I know, but sadly, it happens.  Going back, though, my wife has a rigid code of the rightness or wrongness of sandwich construction – the sandwich protocols.  More on that later.

What started as a simple task quickly went south.  I’d forgotten to replace butter in the butter dish, so now all the butter was in the refrigerator and hard as granite.  That won’t work for grilled sandwiches – it tears the bread to bits when one tries to spread it.  Not a problem, I’ll pop it into the microwave.  This is something I can never get quite right.  I know there’s the “soften” cycle, but that takes, like half a minute, and who has the time?  So I put it in for ten seconds.  Nope, still hard.  Another five seconds.  Melted all over the glass tray.  How does it do that?  So, now I’m trying to brush the melted mess onto the bread with limited success. Next we have to decide whether to go for the mayonnaise or Miracle Whip.  I grew up in a strictly mayonnaise household.  In fact, not just mayonnaise, it had to be Hellman’s.  Was never quite sure if it was taste or my mother was getting kickbacks from the company, and knowing my mother, it could have gone either way.  To give the veneer of compromise, I mix the tuna with half mayo, half MW.

I should point out that my wife prefers, one might even say expects, lots of filling in her sandwiches. Anything less than about four inches of filling is, well, just bread.  So, having filled the lower slice of bread to the breaking point, I plop these babies into the fry pan, tuna spilling out on all sides.  Here’s where the difficulty really kicks up a notch. A tuna melt, in contrast, is pretty straightforward.  You put it on the baking sheet, pop it under the broiler until the cheese melts, and voila – a perfect visual, tasty treat.  With the mile-high grilled sandwich, you have to actually flip it over at some point. What works for pancakes and grilled cheese isn’t quite so easy here.  Forces of gravitational pull and the Earth’s rotation come into play here, so . . . one quick, delicate flip, and the bread moves sideways.  We rebuild, trying desperately not to burn fingers.  Tuna salad was never really meant for aerobics exercises – let’s be honest.  Flipping over a sandwich falls squarely into that category.  Not only that, but you have to flip it several times to make sure it’s just that beautiful golden brown on both sides.  Here again, typical of my evening, I’d forgotten to reset the burner size from small to large, so only the inner half of each sandwich was grilling. The outsides were still pasty pale. Finally got the sandwiches finished and on the plates, the air was blue, and there was a trail of tuna filling across the kitchen much like Hansel and Gretel’s breadcrumbs.

At this point, the reader should be advised of other sandwich protocols.  Sandwiches should always be cut diagonally.  I’ve been informed of this many times over the years. I grew up in a solid red, down the middle household, but apparently that’s an affront to civilization.   The Earl must at some point have decreed this in his early charts and diagrams.  In further sandwich protocols, our daily lunch menu includes that sandwich fillings include combinations of meats – ok, not so out of the ordinary. However, there must be one slice of bread spread with mustard, while the other has the traditional Miracle Whip. These must be slathered on in significant quantities, and must fully reach the outer edges of the bread.  Ham and / or bologna must be on the mustard side – that’s really important – while the smoked turkey touches only the salad dressing. Cheese should be in the middle so it flavors all meats with democratic equality.  Her favored bread is oat nut.  That’s the one that generates a steady release of its cargo of nuts, seeds, and what looks like gravel from the microwave tray across the counter to the cutting board.   Other favored sandwich fillings, which include chicken salad or peanut butter and banana, follow the process outlined above for tuna.  It’s layered much like the paving on a highway – from the crushed rock foundation to the top coat of asphalt.  Thicker is better – I believe that’s one of the Ten Commandments. “Thou shalt not make a thin sandwich.”

So, Grilled Tuna Mission Accomplished!  We settle in comfortably in front of the television to enjoy our sandwiches.  I pick up the one half, a little warm to the touch, and several large blobs of molten tuna salad fall to the floor. Maybe take-out wasn’t such a bad idea.