Two Ham Sandwiches

Some days call for nostalgia, even of tastes or sounds we did not experience in their original era. I find that books do this to me all the time; I want to sit at the dinner table with the characters and break their bread, because the author makes those kitchens smell so good.

So it was that I found myself craving a kitschy ham and cheese sandwich with a thin layer of real mayo on white bread all day today. Store-bought bread, too, the kind that tugs at the roof of your mouth tasting like mayonaise and sugar. I'm reading a novel set in the early 1960s, and the children are constantly devouring platters of sandwiches put out by adoring mothers in twin sets and pumps. Several days of such descriptions, and my stomach was growling for Cold War culinary Americana. My reading, combined with my growing disgust with the low-carb, low-everything-that-tastes-good skin diet, made this desire too strong to combat. After work I walked to the store and purchased sliced Virginia ham, sharp cheddar cheese, and Franz buttermilk bread. I came home and put together my white, orange and pink sandwich. I cut it into two triangles.

It looked like elementary school, like childhood. Not my childhood, because we ate crumbly whole grain bread with tuna fish and minced black olives, but the childhood you read about in novels that take place on Canadian air force bases in 1963. Campbell's tomato soup childhoods.

It was so good. I ate my sandwich in the early evening sunshine with a glass of OJ, and then had some cherries. And a couple of hours later, I ate another sandwich, curled up reading on the couch. (I understand now why storybook children eat multiple sandwiches. They're not very filling--probably because they're not very nutricious. I'm already hungry again. And only the grimmest self-restraint is preventing me from going right back to the fridge to make myself an old-fashioned PB&J.)

I know I shouldn't eat like this every day, and tomorrow I have a gourmet meal planned because my parents are coming over (Mussels Marseillaise, baguette, salad, poached peaches) but once in a blue moon you gotta get your Kraft on.