Two Ways of Looking at a Sandwich

lunch-draw-1.jpgSince I photograph at least 50% of what I cook and bake, just in case I might someday wish to write about it and preserve an ephemeral cupcake or casserole for posterity, my camera is always where I can easily find it. Today, however, my camera was at a Minor League baseball game with Sam, after a prolonged series of “pleaspleasepleasei’llbe caaaaaaaaareful!” attacks wore me out. It didn’t occur to me until after we had eaten what I considered to be an interesting lunch that I could have photographed it using my phone – I just scrapped the whole project when I remembered that my camera was on walkabout among a herd of sugar-addled sixth graders.

I had made really good sandwiches based on things lying around the house: leftover whole grain buns, two different kinds of cheese with hot peppers, pulled pork with barbecue sauce, an abandoned avocado…stuff like that.

lunch-draw-2.jpgMr. Annie got two giant sandwiches piled high with pork, Cabot Habanero Cheddar and avocado, and I made myself a more modest vegetarian model with no pork and a healthy pile of spicy alfalfa sprouts. Alas, these gems of thrifty husbandry were doomed to slip away (literally and figuratively), unmarked.

Later, I remembered an interesting piece I had heard on “All Things Considered” yesterday, about how people who do not enter art-related professions tend to stop drawing at some point because they “aren’t good at it.” The interviewee, a cartoonist, was advocating for lifelong drawing for everyone. I actually do still draw, not well, but for my own amusement. I am a serious doodler, and I have drawn the pictures Sam was supposed to have drawn for approximately 500 school projects.

So I drew the sandwiches.

 

Ann Graham Nichols cooks and writes the Forest Street Kitchen blog in East Lansing, Michigan where she lives in a 1912 house with her husband, her son and an improbable number of animals.