The art of decorating a sandwich.
At the moment my favourite show is Lafer, Lichter & Lecker and often the actual cooking is less important than the witty running jokes and great one-liners. Now and again a morsel of something vaguely related to cooking, does stick in the mind.
As you know, our local theater group has had its annual run of their play ( extremely funny ) and Bob and I volunteered to help with the second most important point of attending a community theater- the libations and vittles needed for mingling before, during and after the play.
Bob has shown such a prowess the last few functions, when he manned the glass washing station in the bar area, that good golly gosh, Bob, they ain't never gonna promote you to barman...you excel at the job no one really likes doing 6-7 hours on the trot. Secretly Bob likes the order of his task or rather the ordered structures he puts in place and I have a feeling that Bob even has a running count of glassware in his head.
On Friday evening I showed up for duty ( actually I shouldn't call it duty because I loved helping out and being included ) and was seconded to slice the garnishes for a lot of Belegte Brote ( Austrian style sandwich ). As the knives we have in our own kitchen are a tad bit on the blunt side, no living on knife's edge in our house, I was in heaven when I used the little black knife provided. It sliced with equal ease through onions, tomatoes, peppers and pickled cucumbers.
Bob, please talk to Helmut, as he sharpened this knife.
My planned station was the coffee and cake area but nothing was happening there yet, so I could help some more in the garnish department.
" Biggi, you can garnish these slices of bread with the things you've just sliced."Ooh, pleasure and pressure all in one. Everyone has there own way and I did so want to be asked back for the next function. Nothing for it but to give my best. A collage of TV cooking shows flashed through my mind and that universal adage, that it must be pleasing to the eye!
The first sandwich I garnished was very diligently arranged and in fact the bread's topping was almost hidden by my artistically arranged synergy of onions, peppers and the odd pickle. Of course that got me into a pickle, because as there were hundreds of toppings to be arranged, the lady in charge took one look at my creation and rightly realized, that I had overstepped the boundary of a thin budget.
With a level of diplomacy that no TV chef has ever shown, she kindly told me that the coffee station was ready for me. Fair enough, I finished about five slices of Biggi-special sandwiches and went to do my stint in the corner...the coffee corner!
Later on, when we were at home, Bob told me with great pride that my one and ony tray of sandwiches was sold out the fastest.
Biggi
