sandwich brunch i

just to start with an aside: i added a pork tenderloin (one of the big ones, you know, ~2′ long or so) to the collection of frozen meats in the freezer. to date, i have: 1 pork tenderloin, in quarters; 1 lb bacon; 1 large pkg chicken thighs; 1 chicken. probably plus some miscellaneous things. in case it wasn’t clear before, i am one of those people with a compulsive need to stock up on things. i’m that girl who buys tons of chipboard so she has it when utrecht is closed or it’s raining; that girl who signs up for lasercutter time all the way into december when it’s only september. hey, i just like to be prepared.

anyway, for those who insist on logic, we’ll pretend that the above digression is really a preface, albeit one totally unrelated to what will now follow. the point of this post, as its title suggests, is really a discussion of this past sunday’s sandwich brunch. when i sent out the invitation i wanted to say something witty, or at least use someone else’s witticisms – for a tea party, for example, i usually use something from “the importance of being earnest,” which has great lines about muffins. however, i forgot, and so the invitation was rather plain. i suppose there’s always next time. i actually had great plans for this brunch; instead of my usual text-only invitation, i was going to make a poster with tons of little icons of iconic sandwiches. but i frittered away the summer, so i didn’t have time in the end. not quite on top of things this time, unfortunately.

however, the brunch itself was really fun! i love themed brunches and potlucks, goodness knows why; this one is a good idea for many reasons.

1: creativity. i do think that for the less food-inclined, making a sandwich is more fun and less daunting than trying to make your mother’s home fries for a more traditional brunch.

2: quantities of food. you know how, when you have potlucks, you always end up with too much food? and then it’s not clear whether the proper etiquette is to accept all of the leftovers, as the hostess; you don’t want to step on anybody’s toes but it’s impossible to tell if your guests want you to keep what’s left, or whether they want it for later to snack on, and if everybody is too polite/passive aggressive, then you’ve got a problem. the sandwich brunch – everybody brought 3ish sandwiches, which we cut up into smaller pieces – is a pretty effective way to moderate how much food you end up with, while still ending up stuffed as is a requirement for brunches.

3: utility associated with eating small things. i feel that you can never underestimate how much pleasure you gain from how you eat, in addition to what you are eating. there’s a reason why people like finger foods so much; you get to eat a lot of different things without eating too much, and somewhat perversely, it’s easier to eat more because you don’t notice all the little things that you eat over the course of a few hours. grazing on small things is also nice and informal. plus grazing is, for me at least, a very pleasing way to think about eating.

and in case you’re wondering what we had, this is the list:

• roast chicken/pear/dill-ricotta spread
• pastrami sandwiches from zaftig’s
• pb+j with yogurt
• openfaced smoked salmon with some sort of spread and dill
• smoked salmon and grape tomatoes on triscuits
• tuna melt

and for dessert, ice cream sandwiches – i made a brownie sheet and a blondie sheet for the outsides, as well as these dense chocolate cookies from foodbeam that i cut in half to fill with ice cream. kind of like a solid, chocolate profiterole. ice cream was inexplicably cheap at star market, so i bought a package of blackberry, one of fenway fudge, and one of peanut butter nation. for those not in the boston area, the latter two are hood brand, red sox-themed flavors. peanut butter nation is vanilla ice cream with semi-solid fudge ripple and little peanut-butter-filled chocolate socks, and is my favorite commercially produced ice cream besides vanilla/chocolate. somehow none of the cookie bases froze all the way through, and were still chewy out of the freezer; i know this pretty well because i’ve been eating them all week. the best combo, by the way, was the brownie sheet base with the blackberry ice cream, which turned out to be surprisingly good and non-artificial tasting.

so there you have it – sandwich brunch no. 1, hopefully to be followed by no. 2 when it gets colder – and it’ll be soup and a sandwich, i think.