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Sandwich: the Ultimate Snack

I can never have enough bread in my life. Currently, I favor the Italian kind, ciabatta, because I can buy a particularly good stick, and as my daughters are extremely fond of it as well, I have to buy 6 loaves at the time. That makes quite a few sandwiches!

Legend tells us that John Montagu, the Fourth Earl of Sandwich, revived the concept of bread as utensil giving us the name we use today. Montagu was First Lord of the Admiralty and patron to Capt. James Cook who explored New Zealand, Australia, Hawaii, and Polynesia. Captain Cook named the Hawaiian Islands after him, calling them the Sandwich Islands (I’ve actually flown over them several times). Montagu was addicted to gambling, so addicted that he gambled for hours at a time at a private club, refusing to get up for meals. To believe this legend, we can only imagine that he was so intent on scooping up winnings that he could not listen to the growls in his stomach demanding food. Supposedly, he ordered his valet to bring him meat tucked between two pieces of bread. His fellow gamblers, no doubt looking for a lucky charm, began to order “the same as Sandwich!” The original sandwich would have been nothing more than a piece of salted beef between two slices of toasted bread, if that. Nowadays, the only limit to how many sandwiches you could come up with is only limited by the imagination. From the fabled poboys in New Orleans to the Aussie sambos via the Lebanese shawarma sandwiches, there are literally thousands of permutations that can be applied to the humble “piece of bread with something in it”. Someday I will write the definite book on sandwiches!

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