“Start where you are, use what you have, do what you can.”

Arthur Ashe would approve. There is a LOT to be said for making something manageable. Taking your creative life one bite at a time. One small card, two knitted socks, three pretty stones, four loose lettuce salads, five daisies in a bunch.

Am I an artist? No. Do I try to create everyday art every day? Yes. Art is in the eye of the beholder. Be the holder of your own art.

From today’s Huffington Post:

Artist Brittany Powell interpreted “sandwich art” literally; she replicated famous artists’ styles by using a slice of bread and some common sandwich ingredients. Powell and former classmate Tae Kitakata started Low-Commitment Projects at the beginning of 2012 — each Monday they publish a new post on their blog. Here’s how they describe their low-commitment venture:

“Low-Commitment Projects provides us a chance to share concepts and schemes without a huge outlay of time, energy, or money. These ventures are like the materialization of mental sketches; there’s minimal risk because they’re quick.”

Words to the wise from one who is in the choir. Fear not the looming to-do list. Venture out!

Thank you, FreshFarm-Amanda.

When I Stop Dreaming, That’s When I’ll Stop Loving You

Wisconsin is in the news.
Those people are tough.
They shoulder history well.

Wisconsin is to the midwest as Denmark is to Scandinavia. I love my homestate and the country of my homesteading ancestor’s origin. Blood type D (for dairy), full fat and unpasteurized, is on a click track through my heart.

ALERT! ALERT! ALERT! DIGRESSION AHEAD!

 Spaulding Gray could make anyone seem fascinating. The aura of Mr. Gray’s fascination backdropped the intriguing bits – from magnificently microscopic to monstrously magnificent – of anyman’s or anywoman’s psyche.  Seeing Mr. Grey live in DC, a while back now,  he interviewed an audience member who claimed he did not dream. Is that possible? I do not know, but would argue no. Not dreaming sounds incredibly uncomfortable. Where would all that brain activity GO? How would the interior knots untangle? You know the line, “That’s what she (or he) said.”.  And we used to add, back when I was sophomoric and, tragically,  it does not seem like only yesterday, “in bed” to our cookie fortunes. When I stop dreaming, in bed or out, that’s when I’ll stop loving Madison, Wisconsin, that’s what I say. God forbid I ever stop dreaming. Mickey’s Tavern is dreamy.  Should you, or anyone else, or the universe, have need to deliver bad news to me, put me on a flight to Mickey’s please. Call ahead with my order and I will see you at a table near the bar lit to reflect a person’s subconscious.   Give it to me there, where any news, good, bad, dreadful or magnificent, will sink down slowly into a dreamy haze of collective unconscious.     Morsty and Joanie and Teddy and I ate happily at Mickey’s last summer. The details of the meal are there, in my memory, and they surface, but only during REM.  Memories may not be recalled on command, but they are there. I did the research. Once imbedded they  may never be expunged.

 When I want to hang around in the dog neon lighting of Mickey’s and feel as though the clock moves at a Wisconsin click track, I count on my dreams.  

Can You Take It Like You Dish It?

Some stuff is just plain-old hard to swallow. Enough is enough, says your heart, mind and belly, and your throat says NOOOO. Enter, the praise sandwich. A praise sandwich is about hope, as in, not dashing it completely. A large portion of praise, a dash of criticism. Get ‘em by the belly. When you’ve got ‘em by the belly, their hearts and minds will follow. Or so one hopes when in the hotseat of delivering criticism.

The Praise Sandwich

Got it? Okay, let’s give it a run through. A little role play. I’ll be me and you can be my  supervisor. I have a monster appetite for praise – best slice that bread in slabs.

You: Lisa, when you make a sandwich, I can see that you put your heart and soul into all of it, beginning with the bread – growing the wheat in your rooftop garden, drawing spring water from a depth of 500 feet, milling the grain in your hand-cranked coffee grinder.Your dedication is unsurpassed.

That said, the mustard, while it is divine –  the vinegar so finely aged in your cellar, the mustard seeds at their peak of ripeness when handpicked by you with a forceps, the flavor so perfectly balanced by your formula, is spread a wee bit thin. 

I do want you to know that cheese from your personal fromagerie is superlative – velvety, tasting of blue skies and clover, and with the faintest hint of the organic muslin in which it is wrapped, woven by you, of course. You undoubtedly have contented cows. This sandwich, so simple, and yet so superlative.

Me: Up the mustard next time. Got it.

See there, wasn’t that easy? Praise goes down fast though, with a strong appetite for more close behind. Stock your larders. Especially if I’m coming over for a sandwich.

You Won’t Need Ear Protection, But You Might Want to Cover Your Eyes

Where the rubber meets the road. Or not. Where the bread meets the meat. And cheese. And cheese again.

Questionable rubber to metal ratio. Questionable bread to meat ratio. Must ponder this monstrosity. Potentially personally. With my own two eyes. And hands. 

Duffy’s Monster Burger

Duffy’s Irish Pub

Thanks to Snoops for the linkydink.

Loosely Aproximite

Since 1926, Iowans have been feasting on the the iconic “loose meat” sandwich, invented by Muscatine, Iowa butcher Fred Angell. Angell began franchising the idea throughout the Hawkeye State under the name “Maid-Rite” after a delivery man he’d drafted to taste his creation purportedly said, “You know, Fred, this sandwich is just made right.”

The sweetly named Maid-Rite is a bellows for fierce opinions, hunkered down in a state thought of, by those clinging by tooth or nail to the US coasts, as bland. Beg pardon, seeing true loose meat requires the steady, merciless eye of a hawk. Hawks in a caucus. Focused.

Loose meat is not pretty. Nor bland. You gotta be able to stomach the possibility of its proximity to raw meat. Cause, you know, the real thing, anything, does not spring to life formed, untouched by human hands, or by the messiness of life.

I’ll take my chances, cause does this
look like something a person would want to eat? No thank you. I prefer proximity to a few loose ends.

I never, ever talk politics here, or anywhere, but am going to walk the limb now. Could we elect adults, please, people? Adults as in people who can live with simultaneous conflicting thoughts. The loose meat stuff. You know, the mess that is beautiful and inevitable and proximus.

Toast Poast # Googleplex: To make a cheese sandwich from scratch, first create your universe.

with apologies to Carl Sagan.

The Toaster Project

Thanks a million slices of buttered toast, Liz!

Wrapped Up in Hope, Another Year!

With gratitude to Sorry-Birds Ellen for sending this poem to me.

My Brilliant Idea

In September my favorite band – I love them and love loving them, The Bottle Rockets, came to town. To DC. Not actually DC, and not actually The Bottle Rockets. The club was in outlying DC, The Churchmere, and the band was a three-piece, rather than afour. They were missing their take-it-apart-and-put-it-back-together-to-make-a-person-shudder-with-guitar-pleasure guitarist John Horton, who was home on baby birth alert.

On FridayFridayFriday wewewe were at the Birchmere and there was a table reserved for us up front, an honor that was reserved for the Pope only as far as I knew. I knew wrong. We had a table.

The Bottle Rockets do this thing with Marshall Crenshaw. What a THING it is. IT IS. Once was not enough. I wanted more of that thing.

That thing was available, for the cost of a drive to Wilmington, Delaware. Along-for-the-Ride Heidi was game for going along for the ride. And to wallow in that THING.

What luck! Wilmington is home to a famous sandwich, the Bobbie, at a famous sandwich shop, Capriotti’s,  served by men as proud as puffed up turkeys.Admittedly, I was a bit puffed up myself for traveling a distance to what I assumed was a landmark, a unique destination, Capriotti’s. Back home a day later, the world wide web told me the truth. It’s a web out there, not world wide, but widish, a web of Capriotti’s. Getting caught did not hurt a bit, nor suck the life out of us.

In fact, we were fortified. Those sandwich dudes would not let me get off ordering just a meatball sub. No sirree Bobbie, I  had to taste the Bobbie, too. Behold the taste. Tasty it was. Although, just between you, me and Along-for-the-Ride Heidi, I like bread on the outside of a sandwich. On the inside, not so much. Not at all.

I have an idea that I think is really good – Stuffing Flavored Bread!! I’m going to make it – bread that has celery, sage, onion, butter, chicken fat, salt and pepper in it. Then I’m going to slice and toast it, and load it up with roast turkey and cranberry jam. That’s my brilliant idea. There, I said it.

#NewJerseySloppyJoe

HASH MARK sandwichnirvana

The mysterious Joe had seduced me with its reputation. Exotic, unattainable, available only indigenously. While I know in  my heart that settling is a crime, punishable by misery, and  that doing without is preferable, noble even, I would have settled for an imitation, an imposter, a reasonable facsimile. I did without though, and my appetite sharpened until it was as pointy as a larding needle.

Head scratcher (honey, don’t do that at the lunch table please): The New Jersey Sloppy Joe has not been pirated to other locales. Muffaletas, pulled pork, Cubanos, Reubens, the banh mi, Philly cheesesteaks, and countless other notable wiches have emigrated to parts far slung. The Joe? Uh uh. No franchised Joe. Although the Town Hall Deli will ship one to you. I wonder how they hold up?

The reputation of the Joe faded to beige once I had experienced the genuine article. I’m a goner and have joined the tribe of fanatics. 

The Town Hall Delicatessen lies in wait between NYC and me. A connector, touchstone, seducer. Connecting the dots from home to Joe with a sprinkling of rye bread crumbs and splashes  of sauce.  Holy cow that sandwich was good.

Serious Eats/Serial Eats

Thank you, Sublime Miss M, for reminding us that summer comes around each year, year in and year out, without fail.

As the lit part of our days dwindles, the neolithic me is clanging the gong, “THE WORLD IS COMING TO AN END! THE END I TELL YOU! THE END! SEEK SHELTER!”

We may have had tools, and the means for clanging, back in the day, the neolithic day, but we did not have therapy, and the means for recognizing that one of our inner parts, the protective part, was working overtime.

Settle down, already. Hot dog days will be upon us before we know it. Carlisle is not a long drive, and it’s a pretty one. Winding roads past orchards that whisper, “Summer is upon us,” while issuing waves of apple blossoms into the ether.

Serious Eats brings our seasonal sequence full circle with a series on hotdogs. Around and around we go, spinning in space on our homeglobe, eating serially, seasonally, panic shushed reliably by summer light.

Hotdog of the Week