Shan’t eat, willst not eat.
There’s nothing worse than a picky eater. I’m not being hyperbolic, either. There is absolutely no quality or trait or attitude or belief in our society today that is worse than a picky eater***.
(***[clears throat and does her best pitchman’s voice] If you stop watching the news, this belief can be yours too for the low, low, price of “not getting stressed out anymore about all of the terrible things going on in the world!” Sit back, social distance, remove your mask, and enjoy your Sandwich Sunday offerings without that icky feeling of impending doom or residual internalized guilt! And remember, as they say, “no news is good news!” (brought to you by Madison Reed. Hair color you can do at home so you don’t have to partake in small talk at a salon and accidentally hear news that’ll bum you out. It’s all the gray coverage without the news coverage.))
Say bye-bye to both bad and good news! No news is the news that you never knew you needed to know!
Anyway, as I was saying, we all agree that picky eaters are the scourge of society. Have you ever tried going out to eat with a picky eater? It takes days to find an acceptable restaurant, and even then they may just get an appetizer because “nothing looks good.” It’s terrible and makes something like the basic need of eating way too stressful.
Now, I’m not a terribly picky eater — and I genuinely try my hardest to try new things — but there are a few things that I know I just do not like. Like, capers. Or olives. Or anchovies. Or olives. Or licorice. Or olives. Or blue cheese. Or olives.
Did I mention that I don’t like olives?
When we decided to start doing Sandwich Sundays, we didn’t extensively study the list to decide if every sandwich looked worthy of eating. Nate and I kinda just glanced at it and simultaneously said “WeShouldDoSandwichSundaysAndEatEverythingOnThisList!” And then after a long, drawn-out Jinx/Coke battle and subsequent truce, we embarked on our sandwich adventure.
I think we both knew there were going to be sandwiches we didn’t like…it’s part of the journey. But I also expected to be pleasantly surprised by sandwiches along the way. Like the most ear-wormy TV theme song to ever play says, “you take the good, you take the bad, you take them both and there you have the snacks of life.”
A show that’s clearly about those in-between meal moments.
Don’t @ me THOSE ARE THE LYRICS.
This week, we rolled onto Louisiana ready for some tasty New Orleans style cooking. There are a lot of states that leave a lot to the imagination (like, what’s North Dakota known for? or Utah? They aren’t exactly known for their cuisines), but Louisiana was coming down the pipe and we were like, “oooh! We’re gonna get a po’boy, or some cajun inspired seafood sandwich, or a beignet with andouille sausage or something!!”
Nope. We got the Muffuletta.
Just when you thought Iowa’s Loose Meat Sandwich took the crown, the Muffuletta came to town ready to fight for the title of “worst name for a sandwich.” I’ll bet you a million dollars that there is a discarded verse from WAP that has “muffuletta” as a lyric.
A song that has the confidence to say “I can absolutely ruin macaroni for everyone.”
And what may be worse than the mental image of Cardi B doing a split twerk while mumble-rapping the word “Muffuletta” as not-so-loosely-veiled innuendo of a part of the female anatomy — a huge component of this sandwich…….is olives.
I was not excited. But I’m nothing if not committed to this culinary cause, so I went about it with (mostly) the same level of attentiveness that we’ve given to all our sandwiches thus far.
One of the recipes I found highly recommended buying Boscoli’ Family Italian Olive Salad instead of going through the pain of buying a million ingredients to make your own olive salad. Normally I’m not one to take a shortcut, but olives so, okay.
Not having to make our own olive salad made making the sandwich much easier. We bought our Italian loaves, piled on the Genoa, Capicola, Mortadella, Mozzerella, Provolone, and the olive salad, and let those puppies sit for a couple of hours. You know, so they can get good and olive-y, just like everyone wants…
Actual footage of me as I made the sandwiches.
When dinnertime came around, I unenthusiastically cut the sandwich into wedges and served them-up alongside the hearty sides I’d made in anticipation of hating the sandwich and needing to fill up on other things.
In that’s-not-really-new-news-news, I hated the Muffuletta, in both name and flavor. There were too many olives. Also, despite my early “it wasn’t so bad!” praise of the fried Bologna sandwich (how cute we were in the earliest days of eating sandwiches), I don’t love the texture of bologna.
That’s twelve strikes. One for the Mortadella, eleven for the olives.
Nightmare fuel.
I feel bad for Louisiana. I think they were done dirty by this list. Sure, the Muffuletta is a Louisiana-born sandwich. But, they have so much more to offer! There are so many things that so much more unique and true to their regional flavors! And with so many fewer olives!
I should mention that Nate thinks it’s a perfectly fine deli sandwich and that it lands squarely in the middle as far as sandwiches we’ve eaten from the list thus far. I think it has olives and he’s wrong because olives, but in the interest of mildly acknowledging that my food hang-ups aren’t everyone’s food hangups, there’s a second opinion.
But what’s done is done and we can put Louisiana in the books and look forward to next week where we murder another lobster.