The Lunch Encounter is Closed for Vacation Until July 8th. Thank You for Your Patronage.

 

We stopped at the Super Duper Weenie on our way north again this year. The fries were thinner and even more toothsomely deelish.

Had every intention of posting from this heavenly island, thought I’d be relaxed and all, inspired. I am, believe you me, but the wifi only connects under the clothes line, in the back forty. It takes more fortitude than my holidaze self has got, to sit in the weeds and think sandwich over a keyboard. Nope. Rather play it safe up here on the patio where my glass is always three quarters full.

Air Fair

Serenely-Sonic Karin turned me on to this quirky catalog, sending me a warning note not to recycle it upon arrival. Up there in my home state, the pin on the map of my dreams, Karin lives between serene Green Bay and sonic Lake Michigan. She is one stake in the tent of my heart, holding me down when my mind is spinning away on east coast rogue winds.

I hope no one is reading this, seeing as I am getting carried away by melodramatic analogies. Open me another Leinie, wouldya honey?

Green Bay is the door to the door, swing through it and you are in Door County. Happy in the limestone steeped soil, sour cherries grow there. See pie below.

Definitely not on trend for locavores, this Foods Across America catalog will none-the-less cause deep yearning for your past locales. If you need it, NEED it, an airplane will bring it to you. Before your heart bursts from missing your accumlated life. I know that hotdogs are not part of the jet set, more badminton net set, and that flying ‘em in as an indulgence not without repercussion, polar ice cap and all…     Still…..

 Amoroso rolls…
Usinger brats…
Boom, boom, boom, I don’t just wear my heart on my sleeve. That would be too subtle. I am a walking, breathing visible woman and you can read my heart’s desires with no special high-tech equipment. Surprised it doesn’t bust right through my rib cage some days, from wanting things long gone up in smoke. Just give me a taste now and then – my imagination can fill in between the dots.
Add these five to my fridge door and that would bring us up to 17 mustard varieties. How much mustard could a housekeeper chuck, if a housekeeper could chuck mustard? None! Ya leave those jars with mere scrapings in ‘em alone!

So see, if your cravings are wilder than your travels, you can armchair it, or maybe you better stick to the picnic table so your mom don’t yell at ya. “What’re these crumbs doing all over the sofa?!” Sandwiches go better with the smell of clovery grass and the ache of a splinter in your elbow anyway now, don’t they?? Don’t let the screen door give your PF Flyers a flat tire on yer way out.

The phrase “wash it all down” does not sound good to me. Does it wash down clockwise in the northern hemisphere and counter clockwise in the southern? These sugar-sweetened sodas with the labels that do not scream BRAND BRAND BRAND at you deserve a slow sip through a straw. Concentrates the carbonation and elevates the sensation. Up, up, up through a stripy tube to you. Them bubblez are good for your heart.

Who’s Counting?

≈The owner offered up his 18-month-old boinging, fur-spewing, joy-lathering collie mix. Tempted, tantalized, tickled, I asked, “What’s his name?”
“Thomas.”
Feeling all happy – bright morning, 11 extra minutes of pure freedom before work, handsome dog making his paws, head, chest comfortable on my lap – I took a hard look down the narrow alley. 
Light at the end of that tunnel. A tiny sliver of freedom. I’m turning the corner gently into a sunny street and hope I live long enough to wallow.
Maybe we’ll get a dog in the fall. I’ve got Thomas’ number in my mobile.

The Bean Counter is in upper Georgetown. On sunny mornings you can simulate an exuberance pill by sitting at “just the one” table out front and waving to passing truckers chugging their way downhill.

 

≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈

 

“The sandwich was as good as ever — the best sandwich in Georgetown,” reports longtime customer Peter Smathers Carter, 24. “Their Cuban is the best authentic Cuban sandwich I have ever had.”

The sandwich ($7-8) was the standout on the menu, with the sweetness of the ham and house-roasted pork mixing harmoniously with gooey, buttery Swiss cheese and the tartness of pickles and mustard. The bread adds to the texture and flavor, its thin and greaseless grilled crust veiling the tenderness inside. Washingtonpost.com

Toast Poast XXVII

 

 

The forecast was:
Sunny with a chance of buttered toast. 

The air was breezy and summery and rolled over and around me like fresh nostalgia. Gently drifting Corabelle toast accumulated, forming crunchy moraines. Magnifying glass in my rucksack, brownie-sized pyre of twigs and a concrete cooker at my feet, the urge to put on the kettle for tea was fierce. Home on the Kettle Moraine.

Ready, Set, Roast!

What’s that in my monkey dish?! PO-TA-TO salad. I want some stuff on the side, stuff on the side, man alive, I want some stuff on the side. Chips are nice and all, a potato in any form is king of the side, but this time of year you gotta go with the salad and, if you are lucky, it will be midwestern style, with thinly sliced ruby radishes and hard boiled eggs. Nice sticky potato cubes with ever so slightly softened corners. Ever so slightly. And ever so slightly salty to the core.

My mother knows how to do it right. Yes, I know you knew I was going to say that. When she learned it, around the middle of the last century, men wore hats like this jaunty, faceless everypotato, and woman wore hair do’s that did not move. You wore them, they did not wear you. And you did not get out a battery of products and power tools each morning. You went to the salon, they fixed your hair, you wore it. End of story.

I am on a one woman crusade to bring back helmet hair. Give me a rock hard, once-a-week-under-the-dryer do. Gonna put in my time at the parlor and then ride off into the sunset with Mr. Rouges Biologique. Come breeze or gale or squall or gust, the pair of us will remain unmussed.

Thrillifying Down to Your Delicatesticles

Don King Enjoys Grandilomentitudinous Sandwich

Onionilliciousdelectiousness

ONYUM!!!

 

Thanks much to One-Always-Needs-a-Napkin Michele!

He Said He Wanted a Whooper

and I did not correct him. I don’t correct you even when I think you’re wrong.

(Mountain to Climb, Bottle Rockets)

He said, “I want a happy meal, mom.” And I said, “How bout a sad meal? I could have the angry meal.” Lo and behold, Burger King beat me to the punch…line.

And What Position Does Hamas Take on Hummus?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The last few weeks I have been way too busy to sit for lunch. Have barely set foot in the Lunch Encounter, let alone put bum to swiveling counter stool and relaxed with a BLT.

Sent a request to my assistant for some, well, assistance.

Me:

If you could help me out, I will try to keep my head from exploding:)

Her:

Ya, that would be messy.

Me:

 My all time fave Enquirer headline:

 

 
Cheating Wife’s Head Explodes
She Burst in Her Lover’s Arms

 Now, that writer should have received a Pulitzer.

Her:

I wonder if she had the Chicken Caesar before she blew.

 A few years ago the Enquirer’s headline was:

 

Sadam Hates Hummus

I burst out laughing at the checkout.

 Me:

All I really need to know I learned in the checkout line.

Hummus sandwich at the Which Wich.

File under “This is Why You Need a Stylist”. Not to be snarky. Forgive me.

Eagerly Waiting for an Accident to Happen

≈¡Sabich!≈

Gesundheit!

The Accidental Vegetarian

Herbivoracious
(Is that not so pretty? It is! It is!)

What exactly is Sabich?  I asked around and this is what I found out:  It’s more modern than when I was in Israel. Had falafel, humous, tahini, all that suff. Yum. But not a sabich. It sounds like someone with a bad cold trying to say sandwich. 

I tried to talk to an actual human, rather than getting it all from cyber-space. See where it got me? Right back in Google’s lap. 

From Master G: It is hummus, fried eggplant, steamed potatoes, (browned) hard-boiled egg, salad and amba (a mango pickle), all tucked neatly into a pita.

Neatly? This I would like to see, in real life, 3-D. And eat. Not neatly. A tidy construction till it meets my teeth. Press my face right into it, like you do with a wedge of watermelon. 

Ruby and Ketchy’s – It’ll More Than Do

Well, it ain’t true that any old dude’ll do, but the joke is funny anyhow. Told it before and I will tell it again. Now. With an every so slightly different inflection. Fresh every time. If Ralph Stanley can tell it, I can tell it. Again and again and again. Wisecracks do wizen, but not this one, dudes.

Q: What’s the difference between a rooster, Uncle Sam and an old maid? (Yeah, yeah, I hate that word combo too, but w.t.h.e.doubletoothpicks?)
A: The first goes cock a doodle doo, the second says yankee doodle doo and for the third any old dude’ll do.
I’m quite sure this “any old dude” who we lured to our table with a promise of bacon would not want to be considered “any old dude”. One would hope not. Out of the driving rain came packs of any-old-dudes pouring into Ruby and Ketchy’s and hunkering down at four-tops. We snagged one or two as they passed. 
Ruby and Ketchy’s is the place you think has gone the way of the passenger pigeon. To come upon it rachets up your faith higher than the knotholes in the knotty pine.Snug as bugs we were. Fog-hushed murmuring, waitresses in soft-soles shoes, car tires gently mashing wet gravel out front. Crossing east from Illinois, West Virginia came upon us at lunch time. Not a moment too soon. Rain, rain, rain. Moving down the highway, the water bolts down onto the windshield and froths up off the truck tires with so much more vigor than when you are standing still. Makes a passenger – and the driver too, I presume – road weary and hungering for familiar food.Ruby and Ketchy’s is in the Cheat Lake area, outside Morgantown, which I understand is all that, but we had no way of knowing. Exit, eat, return.And there were milkshakes. Slurped up in record speed on my side of the table. None for the road.Opened in 1958 by Ruby Nicholson, this sweet spot is still run by their descendants. Ruby’s original recipes include meatloaf, vegetable soup and chili. Dang, we will have to drive that way again and partake. Heard a word about piiiiiiiie.

Eat Your Words

Wordplay by Jon, a thin Perkes

You Hooze, You Lose – Hoooooosierrrrrrrrzzzzzzz

Indianapolis.

Indi-man-apolis. Man-sized-sandapolis. Sand-wich-man-apolis.

Indianapolis.

We did not snooze, and we did not lose. Mercy, those hoosiers. Mercy me.

Nickel Plate Bar and Grill

8654 E 116th Street

Fishers, IN 46038

(317)841-2888

At the railroad Xing. 

Heidi I-love-the-obscure Leech has a smile as wide as an Indianapolis waitress’. Sure as shinola.(As wide as her smile, not as wide as the waitress, dummy.)

This is the land of Otis Gibbs and one can expect authenticity.

The Nickel Plate was the 2005 Indy Men’s Magazine pick for best pork tenderloin sandwich.

Pork tenderloin. So they say. It hadda be the loin, ladies, that crispy fellow was sliver/slice/slab/slob. It was a slab, man. A crispy, make-me-moan slab of sammy.

The burger wazzz, ummmm, none too shabby. On that buttery toasted bread. Never seen that before. Still finding crumbs behind my ears.

Just outside the outer belt on the northeast side. Excellent stop as you cross the country on Route 70. We only went so far as Champaign/Urbana, just far enough to wonder about the Urbana thing. Champaign/Urbana is not the only /Urbana metropolis. What does it mean? Where did it come from? Perhaps, had we driven on further, to the other coast, the mystery would have come clear. But we did a loop de loop, Illinois and back, the rental car turning its nose automatically at the Mississippi. Outta bounds beyond.

The Sandwich of Your Dreams

Fantasize holistically, he said.

Homegrown Sandwiches: Fantasies Fulfilled
The Fremont counter knows exactly what you want, and they’re going to give it to you as sustainably as you can handle.
By Jonathan Kauffman

Homegrown, Sustainable Sandwich Shop

(Re)(Mem)orial(ber)

Remembering. Preserving. Pickling. Keeping. Putting up. Memorializing.

All these words give my heart a sense of time as an enduring thing. The slow tick of the watch rather than a stopwatch race towards our destinies. Tick, tick, tick. Let time and patience do their work. And perhaps a little salt.  Salty sweat, blood and tears.

Kick off BBQ season with Rick’s Picks pickles!
 
Grill-worthy serving suggestions:
 
Dress up cheeseburgers with Green Tomato Condiment, curried green tomato pickles with flavor notes of ketchup and mustard rolled into one.
 
Pair Smokra with brisket and BBQ chicken, our popular okra pickled in Spanish smoked paprika with just enough heat to stand up to the ‘cue! 
 
Chop Bee ‘n’ Beez for hot dog relish; our bread-and-butter pickles have just a touch of sweetness for an unbeatable tangy-sweet combo. 
Garnish summer plates with our cucumber pickles!
 
Kool Gherks – crunchy whole dills
Spears of Influence – cumin lime dill spears
Slices of Life – our classic sliced pickles

Heartfelt thanks to the Sublime Miss M for keeping the Lunch Encounter full of spit and vinegar. Without vinegar we’d have no pickles. Without spit, no kissing. No kissing worth mentioning.

Wheeled Wiener Wagons

Boonswoggle bikin’ today with Ben, an illiterative lad, who managed magnificently to mouth several luscious, illiterative lines. Nicely notable nerdish words were debris boom and back-up beepers.

Queued curbside, tourist trailers don’t boast debris booms but should.

As last call looms back-up beepers broadcast burnished boasters.

Speaking of wienies, many years ago when bike messengers ruled the DC streets, Ben was a pedal jockey, a tall, adorable one, and he carried a pen, a personal pen, a pen no one would steal cause it was obviously HIS. You got to have a pen when it comes time to have the manifest signed. Ben’s pen had a little bird on it, a bird on a tiny spring, a bird with a very pointy beak, facing IN. Scribble your John Hancock with that pen and the little bird pecked away wildly, tapping for plastic beetles in his tiny plastic tree. “It’s a pen pecker,” Ben would grin. “The product, not the condition.”

Repost/Repast

Home On the Range

SANDWICH FOR LISA

Life’s a BITCH

No, it’s not

It’s a bit CH

A BIT of a sandwi CH

–If e.e. can do it so can I

Rye bread

Mustard spread

Salami pickle brie

Rye bread

Wry bred

Must turn instead

So lamely pick on me

Wry bred

–If I can do it so can e.e.

 

Jonathan Perkes, May 2009

 

When Cummings was a boy, his father bought a farm in the Sandwich Range of the White Mountains from a farmer named Ephraim Joy. Cummings was indebted to his boyhood summers at Joy Farm for his Wordsworthian love of nature.

In his adult life, after the death of his father, Cummings continued to live at Joy Farm from May to October every year. He took up bird watching and thumbed through Peterson’s guidebooks. He painted Mount Chocura as often as Cezanne did Mont Saint-Victorie.

Watching the sun set behind the mountain became an evening ritual that he required everyone in the house to join in.

His many poems that celebrate the natural world and the denizens of the forest were inspired by his New Hampshire summers.

Top Speed

I heard a guy talking about these on PRI today, and thought you might want to investigate, writes Malcolm Riviera.Check it out at Holly Eats. Never a dull moment.

Shameless Self Promotion Take 41

All photos by Renee Comet with styling by Moi!

Those Australian beef and lamb folks are exacting, fun-loving, generous and – do they know how to raise tasty animals! Sun-soaked, grass-fed and robust, one can vividly imagine the feel of their warm coats under the palm of a hand on a hot day.

After five days of hard work, they sent me home with a cache of deliciously fatty ribeyes, which made their way to West Virginia for a snowy weekend. From the grill to the breakfast table to the supper sandwich, the ribeye is my all-time, all-around, preferred beef steak – thin, thick, bone in or out, hot or not, salt, pepper, thereyougo.

Earth to Wich, Come In, Come In

Thanks for the alert and the research go to intrepid sandwich correspondent Michele.

For today’s Geo Quiz (May 15), we’re in search of a good sandwich.

What’s simpler than a sandwich? A slice of bread, something in the middle, another slice of bread. This humble yet elegant snack, nay, meal is enjoyed in countless variations the world over.

British food blogger Simon Majumdar recently asked his readers this question:

What’s the world’s best sandwich?

“The favorite sandwich that I’ve ever eaten is the most delicious thing, it’s a soft, soft roll, it’s got grilled mackerel on it which when you bite into hot off the fire, the juices just flow down your chin. It’s got sharp, sweet onions, and it’s got lots of salt and lemon juice on it, and it’s not just the quality of the sandwich which is exceptional because its so fresh, it’s also the context in which you eat it which is just spectacular.”

Those ingredients are the clues…now it’s up to you to try and figure out where that sandwich is from.

 

Name the city that matches the GPS coordinates of this mackerel sandwich!

And for the answer….click here.

(Psssssst. Istanbul)

Birds Are Funny*

Yer welcome. So welcome. You have no idea. We ate eggs in Champaign. I did anyway. You ate pancakes. Eggs in ‘em. We were an egg’s throw from an iconic sandwich, the Horseshoe, just a few hours too late, cause you know, if you wanna be a hot chick who does not live in a coop, you gotta get your beauty rest. We were not up till morning-that-is-truly-night with a Hangover Horseshoe (it’s a sandwich look it up), greasy-chinned, glassy-eyed, salt-deprived. Nope. We used facial astringent and slept. Ate our eggs at a respectable hour in the a.m.’s. Do so hope I am not setting a permanent pervasive personal trend with that grown-up, eggs-only-in-the-morning thingy. I’m okay with occasionally having to learn about the evening before second or third hand.

Hot Chicks: Legal or Not, Chickens Are the Chic New Backyard Addition

I do want chickens. I do, I do, I do. They are illegal, unless you can keep ‘em 100 yards from your fence line. One hundred yards is pretty far if you are talking sous-urban fence lines. I feel like pecking holes in the walls over this. Ain’t this the blinkin’ suburbs?? What the *#$%@? Someone sold me a bill o’ goods when they rhapsodized about the absence of broken glass, barred windows, panhandlers and metal-detectors. The picture of bu-cow-lick nirvana is distinctly out of focus without egg layers. The ones who lay big eggs within arms reach.

Getchyerself a few ostriches, the neighbors would welcome a chicken or five. Just enough to give eggs enough for late night fried egg sandwiches with onions. Before I leave this earth I want to wake once more, just once, on a Saturday morning and reconstruct the previous evening from the eggy clues on the stove. We had sandwiches – ohmyachinghead – oh yeah sandwiches – ohmyachinghead – fried eggs Watson – ohmyachinghead – onions, butter, grilled sourdough, drip, splatter, smear, eggs. Eggs! In the middle of the night when you are staggering, elated, inspired, hungry. Hours, at least 3, before the achinghead.

Ya think we could have a few ostriches? Those eggs make a humdinger of an omelet and an ostrich is not poultry. Quiet too.

The Mayberry Sparrow

*It’s a good story, that I cannot tell well. Birds are funny. Birds are funny, but I did not originate that. Apropos of nothing, nothing discernibly about birds, a landlord said it, in a moment of extreme awkwardness. All purpose that remark, and omni-compassing. Funny peculiar. Understood? Understood.