Extolling the virtue of sandwiches

I just ate the best sandwich. Mesquite smoked turkey, home grown tomato, crisp lettuce on fresh rye with mayo. YUM! As I ate my drippy tomato-ey sandwich over a plate, I recalled reading Lawrence Sanders books from the 70s. I was a mere lass of 12 then, when the first book in his detective series "The Deadly Sins" came out in 1972, but I remember being entranced by the expositional detail given in this gritty NYC murder mystery to ... of all things ... sandwiches.

Sanders' main character in The First through Fourth Deadly Sin detective series was Edward X. Delaney. In the middle of a case, Delaney was usually stumped and what helped him think it through was to create the world's biggest sandwiches made of weird concoctions, and eat them directly leaning over his sink. Isn't is strange that I remember the sandwiches for over 37 years. But I do.

In another sandwich high, my sister and I used to vacation from Maine and Rhode Island at our father's condo on Singer Island in Florida. Wandering the palm-lined byways one afternoon, we stumbled upon a new open-air sandwich vendor. This was in the early 80s, and grocery items like sprouts and avocado and pita pockets were new and all the rage. We looked at the extensive sandwich menu and lingered over the possibilities. Finally I settled on a peanut butter and banana and honey concoction. I don't remember what made it so good but I remember it being just the right temperature to make the bread crispy and the peanut butter melty. It was bar none THE BEST sandwich I ever ate or have eaten since.

Sandwiches are portable, they can be lunch or dinner on the go. You can pack them and they take little room in a lunch bag. They can contain all the food groups and are tasty. They can be simple or complicated, neat or messy. What a perfect food!

The story goes, that the word sandwich that we use today was born in London during the very late hours one night in 1762 when an English nobleman, John Montagu, the Fourth Earl of Sandwich (1718-1792), was too busy gambling to stop for a meal even though he was hungry for some food. The legend goes that he ordered a waiter to bring him roast-beef between two slices of bread. The Earl was able to continue his gambling while eating his snack; and from that incident, we have inherited that quick-food product that we now know as the sandwich. He apparently had the meat put on slices of bread so he wouldn’t get his fingers greasy while he was playing cards. More on the history of the sandwich going back to pre-Christ days, here.

Sandwiches have been featured prominently in movies as well as books. Who can forget Miracle Max's philosophy of life, where he says, "Sonny, true love is the greatest thing in the world - except for a nice MLT - mutton, lettuce and tomato sandwich, where the mutton is nice and lean and the tomato is ripe ... so perky. I love that."

The famous scene in "When Harry Met Sally" at Katz's Deli where Harry and Sally are eating sandwiches and having a certain discussion, and the scene culminates with an older lady in the next booth pointing to Sally's sandwich and saying "I'll have what she's having" (The woman who utteres the immortal line was Director Rob Reiner's mother by the way). That scene is considered one of the funniest of the last thirty years and for the next thirty years no one could order a sandwich in a deli without laughing. Or moaning.

Who can forget Jack Nicholson's trouble trying to get toast at the diner and having to deconstruct a chicken salad sandwich to get it?

Ahhh. The Noble Sandwich. It is history, it is its own scene in books, it has been its own character in movies. It is more than a meal, it is life! OK, I went overboard there. Gee, researching this post has taken so long and I have done laundry in between that... maybe it's time for another sandwich! I'll have a Miracle Max MLT with True Love on the side.

"Inconceivable!" I don't think that means what you think it means

Truer than fiction! When the weather disaster movie "The Day After Tomorrow" came out it garnered a lot of attention. It wasn't only because of the special effects, which were impressive, but also for the seemingly improbable scenarios contained in the film.

New York flooded by a massive wave? "Inconceivable!" yelled reviewers. Really? The British Broadcasting Corporation documentary "End Day" posed exactly that scenario, based on a science release in 2001 indicating that if the volcano Cumbre Vieja erupted strongly enough that a future failure of the western flank of the Cumbre Vieja would cause a "mega-tsunami." The already tenuous landsliding mountain face will catastrophically fail in a massive gravitational landslide and enter the Atlantic Ocean a so called "mega-tsunami." A similar tsunami occurred in Lituya Bay Alaska back in the early 1960s, caused by the same kind of massive landslide. Damage can be seen to this day. So these kinds of tsnunamis are conceivable, and with Cumbre Viejo, only a matter of time.

Though the mega-tsunami depicted in the movie has not occurred yet, in another movie scene, snow falls in New Delhi. "Inconceivable!" the cry is heard again. But in January 2008, Snow blankets Jerusalem. And also in January 2008 "Snow Disrupts Life in India," with Babloo, a New Delhi Bus Driver quoted as saying:"I have come from Delhi. I am trapped here for the last two days and the snow is still falling.” Those were real happenings, their occurrences inconceivable, as it were.

Also in the movie, tornadoes are engulfing L.A.'s Capitol Records building. A movie reviewer says, "Tornadoes in Los Angeles? Only in "Tomorrow." Below, one photo is from the movie...the other is from last night's weather in southern California. "The Day After Tomorrow" inconceivable? As the inimitable Inigo Montoya said to Vizzini: "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."

Ashokan Farewell and "Inconceivable!"

Somehow yesterday I stumbled across the Ken Burns Civil War documentary theme song, Ashokan Farewell, and the reading of the Sullivan Ballou letter. If you’ve never heard the letter from a RI soldier to his wife upon the eve of the Battle of Bull Run, read aloud (the only way to experience it), you can hear it here. And get out your hankies. Can you believe The Civil War came out 17 years ago?

So then I was thinking, ‘wouldn’t it be nice to have a CD of violin music.’ I started a list of not-necessarily-classical violin tunes with the intention of downloading to my iTunes and making a CD. I thought of tunes like the Ashokan Farewell, Vangelis' Building the Barn from Witness, and Knopfler’s A Love Idea from The Princess Bride (which turned 15 this week, can you believe it?) but surprisingly, I had a very hard time finding what I wanted online. My search terms were close but no cigar.

I’m not opposed to classical, Vivaldi and Mozart are great and I love their violin pieces. But searching for popular music yielded bluegrass fiddle or gypsy-Hungarian songs. Even Mark O’Connor didn’t yield what I was looking for, but I’m sure if I stuck with a search of his voluminous tracks I would find pieces that are similar to Ashokan Farewell.

One CD I did find was titled, “The Most Relaxing Violin Music in the Universe.” I like things that are named what they are, don’t you? I stopped the search because it was taking too much time away from other things I wanted to do. Like be productive. I guess I'll settle for stumbling across the tunes I am thinking of but don’t know yet and consider it a musical treasure hunt.

So speaking of The Princess Bride, my all-time favorite movie, I can’t believe it is 15 years old this week. Who could forget The Cliffs Of Insanity? The Pit of Despair? Inigo Montoya and his pursuit of the Six-Fingered Man? I own the DVD, and I’m bringing it to a friend’s house this weekend, a friend who has never seen it. Now, Princess Bride, or PB to us insiders, is a cult classic. That means that we say the lines out loud, like in Rocky Horror Picture Show. I hope my friend doesn’t get too annoyed when I shout “Inconceivable” and “unemployed…in Greenland!” and my fave, “He’s only mostly dead!” Me and the movie Princess Bride. It’s true love.