I remember the first sandwich I made for my husband on the first day of our first semester as newlyweds at BYU: a heaping pile of deli-sliced honey smoked ham, crisp Romane lettuce, and the thinnest slivers of avocado, Roma tomatoes, and red onion with a mustardy mayo dressing cushioned inside two slices of cracked wheat. I made that sandwich, and one for me too, at 7 a.m. and skipped off to school holding his hand.
That night I came home and cried because I had to read Beowulf (the whole thing), memorize The Family: A Proclamation to the World (in Italian), learn the seven types of relative dating (for geology) and cook dinner (we were out of leftovers). Who had time to make sandwiches?
Okay, okay, maybe it only took five minutes—after pulling packages/jars/bottles/produce bags out of the fridge, fidgeting with the re-sealable strips on the pre-cut cheese, dipping my fingers in to jiggle apart slimy pieces of ham, slicing the vegetables and then rinsing the cutting boards to prevent the bamboo from staining green and smelling oniony, squeezing the sandwich into a too-small Ziploc baggie, and then wiping crumbs off counters and shoving everything back into the fridge—BUT still…
After crossing “sandwich maker” off my mental resume a few weeks into that semester, I imagined what I thought might be the imminent demise of my marriage because I couldn’t (or wouldn’t) make sandwiches. My inability to make lunch exciting felt like a reflection of bad housekeeping, hopeless disorganization, and inadequate imagination. Jesse felt sorry for me. He made his own sandwiches from then on, alternating between peanut butter and jelly and ham and cheese.
I hate making sandwiches. It must have had something to do with eating too many of them as a kid. (But Jesse ate them for lunch for 12 years and still doesn’t mind, or complain, which might be the real miracle of my marriage. Although I suspect the reason he eats them is because he’s an economist. In econ speak, the “opportunity costs” of making sandwiches are relatively low; they’re easy, inexpensive, and fast.) Or maybe it’s because I didn’t admire my own parents’ sandwich making skills. I recall my dad only ever making one kind of sandwich for lunch: a slab of Mozarella with salsa on 12-grain, zapped in the microwave for 30 seconds. My mom made me pb and j, toasted cheese, or chicken Spreadables, a lumpy skin-toned glop accented with bits of diced celery and onion packaged in tin cans. And it was always on healthy bread with too many oats and seeds, which I never wanted, and never on Wonder white, which I dreamed about.
My mom must have loathed sandwich making too, because she tried to get me to make my lunch in elementary school. And I fell for it too, when I got a new Little Mermaid lunchbox for my birthday one year. With pride, I made my own sandwiches for about a month. Then the novelty of the lunchbox wore off and I went back to eating salty, cardboardy, corn syrupy school food.
In eighth grade I had two choices: make and eat my own sandwiches or starve. I tried wrapping them in wax paper, thinking it would make them taste better and look cooler. It didn’t work. That year was my last attempt to enjoy sandwiches.
Now that I only work part time, I really have no excuse for not making Jesse sandwiches. To make up for the years I didn’t make lunch, I’ve recently recommitted myself to making sandwiches in the morning. I’ve even added egg salad to my repertoire! Which means Jesse has eaten a solid rotation of pb and j, ham and cheese, or egg salad every day since August.
My New Year’s resolution was to learn how to make bread because I decided that this is the only way to make sandwiches taste edible. Which means that in January, I was on a euphoric sandwich making kick as I churned out golden loaves of wheat and white bread.
But now it’s February, and I can’t keep my bread moist and the crumbs are taking over my life. Yesterday, I had a mini anxiety attack over the mountain of crumbs accumulating on my kitchen counter. I realized that, even if I do perfect my bread baking, one day I’ll probably have kids who will need to eat and what if they don’t like sandwiches but I make them eat them anyway because I don’t believe in Lunchables and I just perpetuate this cycle of hating sandwiches for generations to come?
I got so anxious that I set out to find a solution to my problems the way I usually do: I Googled it. Apparently, my dilemma is unoriginal. Lots of people on the Internet are talking about the sandwich as the poster child of monotony. And they have lots of ideas for how to give the sandwich a makeover with baba ghanouj and French peasant loafs and Middle Eastern Peace Bagels. I discovered a wealth of ideas, like this and this and this, that will save my family—if I can just convince my economist husband that I have time to make him and all our kids Bolognaise rice bake, gluten free pear flan, and bento boxes for lunch.
P.S. I admire women who can make lunch interesting. I want to be like you! How do you rejuvenate lunch boxes at your house? What’s the best sandwich/lunch you’ve ever made?
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