“Life starts all over again when it gets crisp in the fall.”
-F. Scott Fitzgerald
It’s not exactly fall yet, we have a few more weeks according to the calendar before things start to cool down. School has started, and it is the season of the lunch box. I can remember mornings staring grimly into the refrigerator, trying to devise clever lunches for our two. Sometimes I would post magazine or newspaper columns with a magnet to the front of the fridge, willing creativity to visit my pathetic precaffeinated brain. But, as in art, divine inspiration does not come by mere humble beseeching of the gods. One must plan. Or if planning is impossible, one must at least have a stock of good leftovers. Or a realistic crib sheet…
Lunch is my favorite meal, because it sometimes includes potato chips or French fries. Since I work from home I do not go out to lunch with any regularity, or at least, any guilt-free regularity. And there are the budget constraints. How can I possibly justify spending $8.00 on a BLT when I have half a pound of sliced turkey in the cheese drawer? I am far too lazy to cook bacon for myself for an individual meal – but if I remember to cook a few extra slices on Sunday, the bacon warms up nicely in the microwave come Wednesday. There is always a tomato in the fruit basket, and there is half a loaf of rye bread in the breadbox. There is a jar of pickles and a bag of Lay’s potato chips and a can of Diet Coke. I need to quit my bellyaching and step away from the computer and trot off to lunch bliss. There is even a new New Yorker to read.
In the eight grade, Sheila brought a baloney and ketchup sandwich every day for months. Last week we noted that Harriet the Spy carried tomato sandwiches for her school lunches for 5 years. When he was shorter, The Tall One carried an American Cheese Food Product sandwich with French’s day-glow yellow mustard on white Pepperidge Farm bread for a grade or two. He has confided to me that on Sundays now he grills a few chicken breasts to have for his box lunches during the week. Eureka! It only took 21 years!
It is practically chic to bring leftovers in your lunch even to your fancy office. Everyone is concerned with carbon footprints and saving a few dollar. When you are planning lunches I would warn you away from anything that needs re-heating, since school kids don’t have access to microwaves, and you really don’t want to scare your co-workers away with your heady aromas of broccoli or garlic. Stinky second-hand Chinese food will not win you any friends, I am sad to say. Keep the more odoriferous stuff for midnight snacks. Do not take Lean Cuisines to the office! Look for items that can fit between two slices of bread and be eaten cold or at room temperature and go from there.
Cold Lunch bag sandwiches:
Bacon (on buttered white toast)
BLT (get fancy – add a slice of avocado and some sprouts)
Baloney (it’s been years, but I used to love this on rye with spicy brown mustard, then there is the Sheila Way, with catsup)
Bruschetta (tomatoes, feta, garlic and olive tapenade on toasted French bread, and many, many napkins)
Cheese (American, Gouda, Swiss, Provolone, Laughing Cow; you name it)
Chicken (fancier: chicken & marinated zucchini) (try a wrap with black beans and tomato)
Chicken salad (add some apple, red grapes and celery)
Chickpea salad (in a pita with onion and hummus)
Corned beef (on rye)
Crab cake (on a sandwich roll, dusted with Old Bay and a light wave of the mayo spoon)
Cucumber (sliced thin, on crustless bread, with the best butter, please)
Egg salad (add crunchy lettuce and tomato)
Elvis sandwich (Peanut butter, banana, bacon)
Fluffernutter (you need no instruction)
Ham and cheese (fancier: ham, brie and apple and a baguette or a croissant)
Ham salad (add thin slices of cucumber and use a nice dark bread)
Hero (I think everything in your deli drawer would be appropriate here – ham, cheese, salami, pepperoni, onion, lettuce, tomato, Italian dressing – a veritable cornucopia of cold cuts!)
Lobster roll (a schmear of mayo – don’t mess with perfection)
Meatball (we usually fight with the dog for the leftover meatballs – he usually wins)
Meatloaf (add olive tapenade, dill pickles and sliced sweet onion)
Mozzarella and Tomato (line the bread with lots of basil leaves or lettuce)
Pan-bagnat (fancier: tuna nicoise)
Pastrami (rye bread with some cheese and good mustard)
Peanut butter (as a tot I would add a layer of potato chips; I never liked jelly on mine)
The Pilgrim Sandwich (it comes but once a year – so enjoy it! Turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy, stuffing, cranberries, stuffing on left over crescent rolls if you are lucky or just fine on white or rye)
Pimento cheese (the song of the South – can be spread on crackers or bread, be sure to trim the crusts especially if you are entertaining golfers)
Ploughman’s lunch (Bread, pickle, cheese – hold the beer!)
Prosciutto and cheddar (on crusty peasant bread)
Roast beef (fancier: with cucumber, pickles and mayo) (horseradish sauce, parsley & watercress)
Salami (add roasted peppers, provolone and more arugula) (cream cheese, spicy brown mustard and arugula)
Smoked salmon (dill, of course, with capers and cream cheese)
Spinach and artichoke (with roasted red pepper and provolone in a wrap)
Tomato (read last week’s Food Friday: The End of the Vine)
Turkey (add avocado and pickled chiles) (or – add ricotta, red peppers & arugula) (Or my favorite way, that I had first in London in a pub as part of a free lunch – can you imagine? Fresh turkey on a warm, sliced baguette with lashings of Colman’s mustard – which permanently cleared my sinuses)
Tuna salad (try a wrap to be different, with some honey mustard and grated carrot, add pesto)
Veggie Sandwich – cucumber, radish, carrot, goat cheese, avocado, sprouts, hummus
Watercress (on white bread, with unsalted butter – for adventure add radish slices)
Here is a rabbit hole for you:
https://www.thrillist.com/food/nation/national-sandwich-day
https://xray-delta.com/2013/08/05/earl-of-sandwich-best-sandwich-lists/
https://www.food.com/recipes/sandwiches
“One consequential change is that people used to get most of their calories at breakfast and midday, with only the evening top-up at suppertime. Now those intakes are almost exactly reversed. Most of us consume the bulk–a sadly appropriate word here–of our calories in the evening and take them to bed with us, a practice that doesn’t do any good at all.”
― Bill Bryson, “At Home: A Short History of Private Life”
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BobHallsr says
No-No you’ve got it all wrong! This is the formula for the lunchtime delight of of us depression children
One slice of Wonder bread, or the equivalent soft, squishy mass produced wheat product
A slather of yellow mustard
About 3 ounces of an ordinary sliced baloney
A slice of American cheese
A layer of salty potato chips (optional for the elitists after WWII)
A cover of Wonder Bread
BobHallsr ’34
BTW Have you ever “wondered” why Wonder bread lasted for weeks?