Tuesday, August 12, 2014

The Best Thing Since Sliced Bread

August is... jam packed with food, fun and fellowship! Summer is winding down with fall already beginning to enter the picture in some parts of the nation. With so much to celebrate, why not add one more? This one is not just for the day but actually has been a highlight of celebration the entire month. Summertime is vacation and picnics, with one of the stars of either table being the sandwich. While the days in the month of August are nearly half gone, the sandwich will go on and on and on! For now, let's celebrate the delightful, delectable delights enjoyed between two slices of bread.

August is also...

National Sandwich Month

The Web’s Best Grilled Cheese Sandwiches

The versatility of the sandwich is universal. There is hardly any sandwich better than the grilled cheese with its own mega degree of versatility as depicted in the image above (Just click it for more ideas!). There is no right way or wrong way to build a sandwich. It is best when it is your way! Combine what you want, as much or as little as you want. Add the mayo, hold the mayo, serve as humble as a PB&J or build a jazzy creation resembling an architectural phenomenon, a Dagwood Sandwich.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dagwood_sandwich

A Dagwood Sandwich

A Bit of Sandwich History...

You have possibly heard of the Earl of Sandwich, but what about Rabbi Hillel the Elder? The origin of the sandwich is speculative, even at the hands of the most renown historians. Some have suggested recognizable 'sandwiches' date as far back as ancient Babylon. For now, let's connect the two above to the beginnings of what we today know as the sandwich.

First century B.C Rabbi Hillel the Elder is credited with coming up with the sandwich concept. He put bitter herbs between two matzos during Passover. The Hillel sandwich is still popular at Passover feasts.

The name “sandwich” has a slightly more scandalous beginning. Sandwich is the name of a place in the county of Kent, England. In the late 1700s, the Fourth Earl of Sandwich, John Montague, was known to be an avid gambler. He would spend so long at the card table that eventually his hunger would get the better of him. For sustenance, he asked for bread, meat and cheese. Because he needed a hand free for his cards, he put the meat and cheese between the bread. Other players saw this convenient snack and asked for the same.

"...[The sandwich] was not known in America until some time later. Eliza Leslie's Directions for Cookery (1837) listed ham sandwiches as a supper dish, but it was not until much later in the century, when soft white bread loaves became a staple of the American diet, that the sandwich became extremely popular and serviceable. By the 1920s white loaf bread was referred to as "sandwich bread" or "sandwich loaf."
---Encyclopedia of American Food and Drink, John F. Mariani [Lebhar-Friedman:New York] 1999 (p. 283)