The Earl of Sandwich

Who doesn't love a good sandwich?
   Well, people who have wheat allergies, I suppose, but other than them people the world over adore sandwiches. There's just something about two pieces of bread with stuff in between that quiets a restive soul. I could wax rhapsodic about the sandwiches I've consumed over the years, with their pillowy bread and tangy mayo, zesty mustard and sharp cheese, succulent tomatoes and wonderfully salty oh-so-processed lunch meat, cut into triangles like equilateral slices of heaven...
   Ah, sandwiches. I've had good, I've had not so good, and I've had downright terrible. The difference, I've found, is love. And I don't mean that to be sarcastic - I understand that sometimes I can come off that way, totally unintentional* - love really is the difference. Not necessarily the love of the sandwich preparer for me (though Mom sandwiches are the best), but the love the preparer has for the ingredients, for the process, for the Aristotelian essence of Sandwich.
   Why is it, for instance, that you can go into a Subway on a Tuesday and get a half-assed thrown-together mess that barely passes for lunch, but you can go into the exact same store on a Thursday and get a sublime, delicious meal that makes you happy you wandered by right when you were hungry? The ingredients are the same, the store is the same, you're the same, the only thing that's changed is the person behind the counter. The best and worst sandwiches I ever had were at the same Subway. One was a haphazard, borderline-inedible pile of garbage, the other was an almost picture-perfect pleasure to consume. The guy who made the good sandwich didn't take longer, or use better ingredients, or slip me $100 to say this, that guy took pride in what he did and had a love for making food that showed in the work he produced. The other girl would clearly have been happier working anywhere else.
   A friend of mine gave me the title of a sandwich cookbook about a year ago, and I've had the proposal for the book sitting half-done in my computer for a while now. I think it's time to dust it off and put out a cookbook that's also a personal philosophy. Anybody interested in buying the first copy?


* okay, that was sarcasm