The Wednesday Blog – Wednesday Blog by Seán Thomas Kane
Like many people I love a good sandwich. My tastes are a bit austere, a bit simple for most. I’ll go between one or two options: ham and provolone with maybe some lettuce and rarely a tomato slice or two, or roast beef and Swiss. More often than not lunch is a meal that I tend to eat on the run, either in between things in my apartment or on the go between meetings and lectures at the university. There are also plenty of lunches where I’ve ended up going through the drive-thru at one of the local outlets of the national burger chains, you know what I mean, or made a stop for a burrito at Chipotle, but beyond all of those options nothing beats a good sandwich decked out on wonderful bread.
Some of the best sandwiches I’ve ever had were in France. There my preference is the rather plain jambon-beurre, ham and butter on a baguette. Writing this now that doesn’t seem like such a bad idea to try making in my apartment in Binghamton one of these days. You could go as fancy as you’d like with your lunch, have all sorts of sauces and toppings on your sandwiches, and bravo for you with your preference. Yet what I’ve ended up settling on here is putting my ham and provolone or roast beef and Swiss on a bagel, often a raisin bagel mildly toasted and buttered to perfection.
Sandwiches are good topics to make podcasts about because eventually everyone gets hungry. There’s a chance this one might rise above my average 10 listeners per episode, all because I tag the blog post version of it with the keyword “sandwich”. There are plenty of sandwich-themed short videos and other entertainments out there, take British motoring journalist James May’s bunker kitchen on Food Tribe, and while I enjoy Mr. May’s commentaries for their insight and humor, I appreciate seeing how different his tastes are to my own.
There are all sorts of commentaries about sandwiches and what they mean below the surface. Some say they are symbols of how our culture has developed a need to deal with human necessities on the go, we “eat when [we’re] hungry ” to borrow a phrase from an Irish folk song about moonshiners. There are also the endless debates about sandwiches, what makes sandwiches, how we define sandwiches, are hot dogs sandwiches? The jury is still out on that one, no doubt enjoying their own bready concoctions in the jury room. The sandwich is one thing too good for even the French to ignore, adopting it with its pure English name despite a general cultural distrust of anglicismes.So, here’s to the sandwich, the humblest crust upon which we stack our hopes and dreams, the object of our fancies, and the delight of a quick lunch.
Wednesday Blog by Seán Thomas Kane 