On Mondays they bring in bagels from Brandwein's to our co-working space for breakfast. Typically I grab one, archive it in one of the plastic food containers I keep in my filing cabinet, then take it home for the next day's breakfast. Rather than eat a whole bagel myself, which I really don't need, Mary and I split it. I scramble one egg and butter the bagel. This ends up being a perfect meal. There salt on the bagel suffices, so all I just need to pepper the egg.
Similarly, over time I have gravitated towards ever simpler sandwiches. For example roast beef on rye with LTO plus mayo, or a chicken cutlet on a roll with the same combo, plus hot sauce. Instead of the endless proliferation of condiments, adjectives, adverbs, and combinations thereof, a few good ingredients.
Admittedly, this strategy works best when combined with a focus on quality purveyors and/or ingredients, which is pretty much the same thing, The chicken cutlet sandwich, for example, has become canonical for me and Natalie in two places: Nica's on Orange in New Haven and the Manor Deli in Larchmont, and has thereby ascended to the rare echelon of special meals, imbued with specific meaning, not unlike Proust's madeleine.
No comments:
Post a Comment