神さま's gift of Sandwiches

I made a delicious sandwich Friday night before badminton. I had saved up several special ingredients to ease out of the long work week. Sandwiches are easily my favorite food; simple, healthy and delicious. I can’t really remember a day going by where I didn’t eat a sandwich. Sure Italian food and pizza are good, but sandwiches are something I could happily survive on. In the reality TV show Big Brother the losing team has to eat peanut butter and jam sandwiches for a week; where do I sign up? My dad instilled in me a strong habit of enjoying peanut butter and banana sandwiches on weekends. Coldcut sandwiches for lunch are energizing and even tomato and cheese sandwiches for an evening snack are a great comfort food. I’m not in to the different salad sandwiches or modern restaurants’ take on sandwiches that stuff food between bread that is better left on the plate and eaten with a fork. I prefer to make my own sandwiches.

I saved a dab of pesto from last weeks pesto pasta to use. The shredded cheese is all local from Tokachi. The tomato was a perfect $4 hot house tomato. This is important because most of the normal tomatoes I use are of the tasteless Japanese variety (an Italians nightmare). The mini-tomatoes do have more taste but it looks absurd to slice up 10 small mini-tomatoes for a sandwich (this is from experience). Normally I go without meat in them because there are really no quality coldcuts to speak of—just unknown Japanese processed meat—and using bacon all the time is unhealthy. However, I just happen to be in A-Coop the other day and there was great sliced coldcut ham just sitting on the shelf, just like you find in Safeway and I ate all through high school. I bought some on the spot. All of this is grilled to perfection in a normal frying pan.

I have an alternative motivation to sharing this picture because I’m using the image in a small presentation next week of my favorite things. Also included in the list: Badminton, Kendama, and the Shinkensen.