Food Archives - Lunar Obverse

The best sandwich I’ve had all week

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Today I made a sandwich that had so many vegetables on it. It was an epic pastrami and pepper jack cheese sandwich on medium-toasted whole grain Franz bread. In addition to probably an inch thick pile of thick-sliced pastrami and a slab of that awesome deli pepper jack cheese, it had plenty of 50/50 mix salad greens (arugula and spinach leaves), slices of delicious Roma tomatoes, white onion, pickles, and pepperoncinis. Plus catsup, spicy broun mustard, salt and black pepper. It was so good.

I took my time making it, more time than it took to eat it; maybe 10 or 15 minutes from start to finish. I had to get out all the ingredients. I’m very methodical when I make a sandwich. I start with putting the bread in the toaster, and then start pulling the rest of the ingredients out of the fridge. Sliced a whole Roma tomato just to use two thick slices. The tomatoes I got from the store yesterday were very big examples of the type; I put the rest of the tomato in a container to use them for another sandwich in the future.

The white onion was already sliced and in a ziplock bag; I just cut off what I needed and put the rest in the bag. The pickles and pepperoncinis came in a jar. I store the cheese in a plastic bag. I buy the salad greens in a large-ish plastic tub. I like buying the greens that way because they keep for a while and I don’t have to worry about cutting them up.

The pastrami was in a brand-new package; when I cut it open I put the rest back in another ziplock bag for later. I make this sandwich a lot. Can you tell?

Eating it was a challenge; it was so tall that the top layers were sliding off. I had to carefully scoop up the sandwich halves (I cut it on the diagonal which is the best way for me to cut, and by best way I mean my preferred way to cut a sandwich, do what you want I’m not the boss of you) carefully, and hold the whole thing with both hands.

Biting in to this sandwich brought delightful sensations of texture, smell, and taste. The textures were the tough and rough texture of the toasted bread, the juicy flesh of the tomatoes, the crisp snap of the pickles and onion slices, the dense spinach leaves and the delicate arugula leaves, all before the soft cheese and feeling the fall-apart stack of pastrami beef. All coated liberally in the sauce of catsup and the seed-y mustard. Top to bottom, inside to outside, a crescendo of mouth feel.

The smells were a wonderful mix of the toasted bread, the fresh lettuce and tomato, the vinegar and salt of the pickles, and the hit of spice from the banana peppers and mustard, plus the sugary catsup, more salt from the beef, and the wine-like smell of the cheese, flecked with more bits of peppers.

And the tastes mirror the scent; spicy and fresh and vinegar and toasty grains and salty meat and tangy sauces. It was the best sandwich I’ve eaten all week.

The Joy of Eating

Joy

Still thinking about joy, motherfucker, do I feel it? I probe for the feeling of joy the way someone would poke the socket where thier tooth used to be. It’s missing. I don’t know where it’s gone. I have to think about it, which I know is less than ideal. It should bubble up from my feelings-place. Laughter and happiness, not cold analysis.

I might need to make it a practice to try to spark joy in my life. I will have to seek it out. Find joyful things, expose my heart to them, ask, “what does this make you feel?”

But I did find one thing recently that always makes me feel good in the momemnt. A category of thing: food. There are many kinds of foods, meals, that I just love. I can list a few of them, and how they make me feel.

Brian’s Burger

Close up of a homemade cheeseburger; lettuce, tomato slices, white onion slices, pickles and banana peppers, along with catsup, spill out of it onto the aluminum foil that wraps it up. In the background is a Yeti microphone, a bottle of Squirt soda, and the bottom edge of two computer monitors. This person is eating at their desk. — I made this!

There’s nothing like biting in to a big old cheeseburger. To me, the perfect cheeseburger starts with thick, medium-rare beef patty that’s been seasoned with salt, pepper, onion and garlic. To begin, in-between a toasted bun (Kaiser rolls are great), I want catsup, spicy brown mustard, thick slice of medium cheddar cheese (as an Oregonian, it’s hard to beat Tillamook brand) that’s been melted onto the patty when it was cooked. Garnish with fancy lettuce (I tend to buy 50/50 spring mix of baby greens and spinach), slices of pickles, white or yellow onion, tomato slices (Roma tomatoes have the best flavor).

Add some banana peppers just for fun. Maybe a drizzle of sriracha for spice. Also could add slices of bacon for flavor and texture. Now that’s a good burger. My mouth is watering just thinking about it. Making and eating one of these is absolutely a joyful practice for me.

Pad Thai

There are meals that I love that I don’t know how to make. One of these is pad Thai noodles with chicken. At its most basic it’s a sauce made of tamarind paste and fish sauce, stir fried rice noodles, and veggies and some protein (chicken is my favorite). I know that in Thailand it’s not really fancy food, it’s street food, simple and easy to make and serve. Just haven’t attempted to make it myself.

I remember a trope on sitcoms back in the 80s and 90s was someone taking a pad Thai class. It was a signal that that character was pretentious and upper-middle class. They had spare time enough to take a class to make a specific kind of Asian food. It’s entirely possible that that idea soaked into my brain and has created a barrier that won’t let me learn how to make it. Kinda sad, if true.

But eating it is absolutely a joy for me. Accordingly, when eating it, I love the tangy sauce, the slippery noodles, and the cruncy bits of bean sprouts, green onions, sliced carrots, as well as the ground peanuts (I always order extra ground peanuts.) Simple, filling food that I would eat many times a week if I could. Maybe it’s a good thing I don’t know how to make it? I might learn to get tired of it. Until then, though, joy.

Expiration dates

Daily Story Project

Walked downstairs this evening to find dad in the kitchen unsealing a gallon bottle of Herdez green salsa, using his pocket knife to cut away the seal around the mouth.

“Oh,” I said, “did we run out of green salsa?”

“No but I saw this in the back of the fridge and figured we might as well use it.”

I frowned, pinching my eyebrows together. “I don’t know that I would trust that salsa, dad.”

“Why not?” he said. “What’s in here that would go bad?” He gestured at the bottle. I could tell my reaction to this was confusing to him.

“What’s the expiration date?” I picked up the bottle and turned it around. The label had printed on it “Good until May 2024”. I read that out loud, added “So it was good until last month. I probably bought it a year ago.”

“Well, Hell, I’m sure it’s still good.”

“OK. Let me know how that goes.” I was sure I bought it at least a year ago, long before he’d moved in. And then promptly forgot about it, because it was hidden away in the very back of my fridge, on a lower shelf, out of sight, out of mind. When I did accidentally see it in the intervening months, I felt a shiver of shame for having not used it at all, and then to avoid that bad feeling, had immediately put it out of my mind again.

Such is the weird way my brain works. I don’t have an official test or diagnosis, but from all I’ve read, this is basically ADHD, or at least something very much like it.

I went in the fridge and got a bottle of Mexican Coke out of the bin. “There’s so much food in there.”

Dad’s voice was both encouraging and tinged with fatherly concern. “Yeah, we should use it up. Hell, we have that whole package of chimichangas in there we haven’t even opened yet! That’s what I’m making for myself.”

“Yeah.” The guilt for buying food, ignoring it, and having to throw it out when it goes bad felt like a cold stone sitting in the bottom of my stomach, the cold radiating up my chest and back. I know I should eat the stuff I buy, I know I shouldn’t buy more food when there’s food still to eat. But that’s also why I tend to buy either canned goods or frozen foods, things that will keep a very long time. I know that if I don’t see it, I’ll forget about it until somethind reminds me.

If dad wasn’t here and I was buying food for myself, I would not buy nearly as much, for exactly this reason. I don’t like it when food goes bad. So I don’t buy it, then when I get hungry, I buy something from a fast food restaurant, something immediate, delicious, and expensive. Another bad habit.

I went out for a walk after that, putting on my trail shoes and wearing my coat because it’s been so rainy lately. When I got back, I made myself a pastrami sandwich, using the tomatoes, onion, and lettuce that had not yet gone bad, and opening up the new loaf of bread we had gotten, what, two grocery trips ago? No mold on the bread.

Might as well use it up.

Adding healthy things

exercise

Haven’t been eating very well lately. Haven’t been eating much at all, actually, since I’ve been sick and my appetite has been low to non-existent. Most of what I’ve been putting in my mouth is microwaved burritos, simple sandwiches, or things like cherry turnovers, chocolate bars, tortilla chips, and the like. And I can recognize that my body, feeling sick, and then putting food of questionable nutritional value into it, just makes it feel worse in the long run. Not good; it’s a downward spiral, the opposite of a virtuous cycle.

What am I trying to do to change that? I am abiding by one of the best rules I’ve ever learned from dieticians and nutrionists: instead of removing unhealthy-but-loved things from my diet, creating a lack and a hole that is unsatisfying to me, I will aim to add things that are healthy on top of what I’m already eating. And by adding things to my diet I am hopefully satisfying my hunger enough that it has at least a chance to squeeze out the unhealthy things, because I can only eat so much, y’know?

Last night, late, around 9:30 or 10:00 pm, I got hungry, and wasn’t sure what I had in the fridge that I could eat. I worried it was too late, too close to bedtime, but still didn’t want to go to bed hungry. I went downstairs, and on the way down, realized I could make a little charcuterie plate. I had cheese slices, pickles, carrots, some ham slices… it was the perfect idea. Light enough, but I could include good, fiber and nutrient-rich, things. I cut up some carrots, some celery, and then also included a couple of slices of that salty black forest ham. I poured a little jalepeno Ranch dressing into a cup to dip the carrots (and, frankly, the ham) into.

Overall it was a better meal for the additions. Instead of me nuking another carb and fat laden burrito, I got a nice spread of items. I felt mentally better and physically better.

Today, for lunch, I fell back on the burrito thing. But, as I did last night, I sliced up a carrot and ate them along the cheese, salsa, and sour cream topped burrito. And again, I felt the better for it.

This “add things that are healthy” idea is a good one and I plan on doing it going forward as much as possible. Can’t wait to feel better overall.

I’m also walking for at least 30 minutes a day. That hasn’t yielded as much benefit as I’d hoped but at least I’m getting outside, getting some fresh air, and moving around a bit every day. It’s not vigorous exercise but it’s better than sitting in my computer chair all day, which is what I’m likely to do if I don’t force myself to add exercise to my daily routine. Adding good things is the rule and it works for physical activity as well as meals and food.