The goal might not be to exactly enjoy every sandwich. Some sandwiches are just straight up trash. Maybe the goal is to notice that you’re eating one.
That's obvious. Who doesn't notice that? I think if I were terminally ill I'd seek things I enjoy, and savor them, and avoid bad sandwiches. In good health, I'd ask what made that sandwich bad and think about how to improve it.
Both cases are compatible with "noticing that you are eating a sandwich". The issue usually is that its much more difficult to "notice it" if you are thinking about how to improve it. Its like the classic parable of the camel, the needle eye and the rich. But its not impossible.
The issue usually is that its much more difficult to "notice it" if you are thinking about how to improve it.
Quite the contrary. It's the difference between active eating and passive eating. It is the active eater who appreciates what he is eating at the deepest level, being capable of recreating and modifying his food. It is the same with every endeavor.
I agree, but I may be talking about another level of "noticing". More about observing the act and being conscious about what is happening. Thats easier it you are not rationalizing it. If you are an expert on a topic to the point where it becomes second nature, then you probably again have it easier to enter into that state, which can be a door to great creativity. But you can also get lost in all of the details that take you away from the moment.
This hits me like a brick wall with my young children. Seeing them change so rapidly is a glimpse into how short life is and how often an experience unknowingly becomes the last of its kind.
There is so much to be gained by slowing down, focusing on what you can be grateful for, and not striving for more.
I guess you can convince to want something totally different like bliss, moksha or whatever but the basic instinct to want is still there . Not sure why that particular form is more desirable. I know some personally and they constantly struggle with wanting that not being able to achieve.
It's not impossible (and I'd substitute "evolved" for "designed").
Yes, wanting "More" [time, money, love, status] is pretty firmly ingrained as an advantageous trait. But you can override your instincts (e.g. declining a drink when thirsty, if you learn the glass of water contains poison). And it is possible to learn to want what you already have.
How?
Practice three things: Compassion, Attention, and Gratitude.
(Pick any two, and the third will follow almost automatically.)
That's the central thesis of an excellent book, "How to Want What You Have" by Dr Timothy Miller. It changed my life.
The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures. - Psalm 23:1-2
The interpretation of this I love most is the visual of a sheep, satisfied enough that they lay down instead of grazing or drinking. This posture is mentioned repeatedly in the Bible.
I imagine most religions and philosophies have similar.
Not if you have a transformed and renewed mind. Once you taste the fruit of life, drink the water, eat the bread, drink the blood - nothing else will suffice.
This is a hard teaching and not all can accept it. Those that do will find peace, life, meaning, and rest.
Likewise, I already have some regrets about not being as present with the first year of my second kid because of various other life distractions/stresses. Increasingly my biggest fear/worry/anxiety in life is that I just won’t be present for it - which is a self-fulfilling prophecy!
Our daughter turned thirteen this year. Counting the number of remaining family summer vacations, Christmases, etc, remaining really hit home for me this year.
Some of the days have been very, very long. The weeks, months, and years have been so short.
This passage from Trading Bases by Joe Peta chokes me up everytime.
There's an expression on Wall Street, often attributed to Warren Buffett, which goes, "They don't ring a bell at the top." There's tremendous wisdom in that adage, because while in retrospect it's easy to pinpoint the day that the market (or even a specific stock) reached an all-time high that looks unlikely to ever be attained again in the foreseeable future, at the moment it happened it was impossible to recognize. That's because, unlike market bottoms, which usually have a crescendo feeling to them accompanied by investor panic, a market top generally passes without fanfare, indistinguishable from the series of tops that preceded it.
You know when else they don't ring a bell? For parents, they don't ring a bell the last time you read Goodnight Moon. They don't do it the last time you watch Sleeping Beauty and they don't do it the last time you help your daughter put on the same article of clothing she's wanted to wear every day as a toddler. Instead, a couple years after the fact, you find the book on a shelf, the DVD in a box, and the tights with the pink ballerinas on them in the back of a drawer. You can't for the life of you remember the last time you read the book, danced to "Once Upon a Dream" with your daughter on your feet, or helped put those tights on. But you do know that now she reads to herself at bedtime, she dances, alone, to Taylor Swift, and the tights—well, the tights wouldn't even make it over her knees.
Oooh, I love this. A few years ago, I started keeping track of my favorite coffeeshops. They're not "the best ever" by some objective metric; I'm not Zagat. But they're special to me!
I assume your metrics are great coffee and excellent ambiance.
The best coffee I've ever had was from The Library Specialty Coffee in Toronto. The location though is so minimal and uninviting that I couldn't rank it very highly as a coffeeshop.
Where I live (Austin) some of the best coffee I've had is from a trailer, so that obviously wouldn't rank either.
I'm not sure I've been to any coffeeshops I would rank very highly... Sadly, the best is probably the Starbucks near where I live. The people who work there are extraordinarily nice and the place is very clean, quiet, and comfortable. Too bad the coffee isn't better.
I never thought about it before, but I guess the place is more important to me than the drink when determining where I want to go for a cup of coffee.
I'm not vegetarian, but Grand Central Bakery in Seattle/Portland had a Maitake sandwich that I loved enough to reproduce at home:
"Crisp-roasted maitake mushrooms with garlicky labneh, fresh local raab, warm Middle Eastern Spices and Mama Lil's spicy pickled peppers on a toasted Ciabatta roll."
The raab and the mushrooms (sliced into sheets) were seared crisp. I substituted harissa mixed with mayo or greek yogurt for the sauce.
the sandwich shop in dogpatch has been closed for years. their building was remodeled for startups (kind of a meh patchwork of steel panels, some corten and some not), and they tried to move over a couple blocks, but the pandemic got them.
IMHO this is Beginner Level, basic enjoyment, at the cost of cardiovascular health, due to those saturated fats that the man in the sandwich shop never tells you about.
To up your sandwich enjoyment game, what you want is a bread making machine, ideally by Panasonic, with plenty of flour in the cupboards and a well-rehearsed routine of putting the bread on.
Here you get delayed gratification since it takes three minutes to load the machine and four hours for it to bake a loaf. You get proper bakery smells, which is a bonus, and the freshest bread in town (the second you unload the machine).
Freshness is a hack with any bread you buy. It is usually harmless additives that keep it 'fresh', but there is no need for the 'harmless additives' when you have a Panasonic machine. You won't find yourself adding weird chemicals, but you could find yourself adding, nuts, seeds, berries and other fruit to your bakes, to suit your whims or preferences of your guests.
Sometimes some people notice your fresh bread and insist on telling you how much better their sourdough is (that they made once in lockdown) or how that their local bakery makes far nicer bread than your pathetic little Panasonic machine. So you get an extra 'last laugh' from having to endure these ad-hoc lectures on sourdough that is just not in the same league as your favourite bread made effortless by your lovely machine.
You might miss out on interactions with that sandwich store (they rob you slowly, hence the staff will know your name and preferences, if a regular), however, people outside the sourdough cult are always impressed by home made bread, even if you insist it was effortlessly made.
Making your own bread connects you to our history of making bread, plus you get a much healthier product, arguably real bread, unlike that nonsense that is commercially sold as 'bread'.
Eating a sandwich now, haven't bought one for maybe five years.
I remember a notable triangular sandwich packed in a cardboard box and sold on the motorway in France. I ate it while my jet lagged toddler cried and cried and we tried to get to Provence before nightfall.
There is something truly rotten about service station sandwiches in France. I once had a croque monsieur that was so execrable it made the paper bag appetising by comparison.
I don't know, Sandwiches of History has some real stinkers every now and then, such as the Cheese and Banana Sandwich, the Clam and Cheese Sandwich, or the Peanut-Butter Sandwich.
So many tasty things people miss out on due to peer pressure and being afraid to give "strange" food a try.
I agree with the sentiment, but there's probably also a cultural thing. I love root beer, for instance, but from what I understand, many (most?) Europeans who've tried it think it's disgusting and tastes like medicine.
The thing I find fascinating about the root beer thing is that I don't recall root beer being an acquired taste. Like, I remember cola being a acquired taste, and Dr. Pepper being an acquired taste, but root beer, best I can recall, I enjoyed right off the bat. Same with most North Americans I know. And yeah, my overseas cousins find the stuff foul.
Yes there is. There are a lot people have no idea what makes a good sandwich. They will happily put turkey, Miracle Whip, and two Kraft singles on 11-grain honey wheat Wonderbread and go about their day fully convinced that they made something delicious and healthy.
The fact that >50% of Italian sub shops default to not putting onions on their torpedoes is a testament to how far we've fallen as a culture.
These aren't preferences so much as they are facts. I am very much not messing around. You can tell how serious I am by how I equated the decline of western civilization to a lack of sandwich vegetables.
This is one of my favorite quotes and I'm glad to see it discussed here.
My favorite interpretation is focusing on the beauty of how even such a mundane thing as a sandwich is a unique experience. Someone made it by-hand, the ingredients have their own backstory in arriving in the present moment, and the taste is greater than the sum of its parts because of all the competing and complementary flavors.
Sandwiches hide in plain sight and even when they aren't great they are unique and will underscore how good your next great one is.
I was seven years old in 1969 during the moon landing, with the whole extended family gathered around the enormous TV console. It was a very memorable event for me, but the thing I most remember is that mom made me and my friend a simple BLT with mayo. For some reason it was like a visitation from Jesus for both of us. We spent the next few years making them or begging for them relentlessly. We thought it was our own thing. Over the next fifty years I've tried to recapture that, but never entirely succeeded in reaching the same culinary apogee. Still trying. Every BLT comes with free a flashback to that hot July day. And a remembrance of that best of friends who we lost twelve years ago.
Brands matter. See if you can match the brands that your mother used; especially the mayonnaise. Bacon will be harder to match.
In 1969, my family would have made its own mayonnaise, so try that, too.
If I want a flashback to my childhood, it's peanut butter and jelly. But it has to be Skippy peanut butter on Wonder bread with Smuckers jelly, and freezing cold whole milk. Anything deviation doesn't trigger the same brain cells.
Bacons vary widely even across brands today. It is very much not a simple commodity product. You are taking a living animal which may be of several different breeds and raised in any number of environments. You butcher it, itself a skilled occupation. Then cure it using a number of highly variable ingredients and parameters for a variable amount of time. Slice it with varying thickness.
Cured meats are entire world unto themselves. I have had bacon that tasted like a salty strip of cardboard, and bacon that is a peppery, savory, chewy/crispy revelation.
In many ways the BLT is sort of the perfect example food for showing how non-commoditized ingredients actually are. It's only five ingredients: bread, bacon, lettuce, tomato, mayonnaise. But each of those ingredients can vary extremely widely.
Take some generic white bread, thin cheap bacon, old iceberg lettuce, out of season grocery store tomatoes, and Miracle Whip and you'll have a result that you wouldn't understand why anyone on Earth would eat.
Then get some good bakery sourdough, thick cut heavily peppered bacon from a small farm that treats their pigs well, fresh butter or Bibb lettuce, late summer tomatoes from your own garden (the best tomatoes simply don't ship), and whip up a batch of mayo yourself without any preservatives using good eggs and oil. It will likely be one of the best meals you've ever eaten.
I have a similar thing here, albeit not tied to as vivid a memory of a day or of people-- just a memory of food.
I've been chasing a "white whale" bacon / egg / cheddar on grilled Texas toast sandwich I made 20-ish years ago that I've never been able to replicate. I didn't keep track of the particular bacon or cheddar I used, and I don't recall if the eggs were the farm co-op eggs we used to get or plain old grocery eggs. I should have taken notes but didn't.
It's probably a silly thing to do, but I keep fairly meticulous notes about food I make now (including weighing-out ingredients on a kitchen scale). I don't want to have another experience like my mythical sandwich.
My wife has a good point about my quest: I can't replicate my hunger level that day. That got me paying attention to how hunger effects food enjoyment. I now make a point of planning my eating ahead of special meals to maximize enjoyment. It's shocking, to me, how much a little hunger makes food better.
That reminds me of a day almost 30 years ago where I spent my last money and had a big pizza gyros. I went from starving to completely
satiated. It was absolutely
glorius. I’m still a big fan of pizza Gyros thanks to this special memorable occasion.
In college I did an apple fast twice. Only eat apples and drink water for 3 days. You have to be careful doing this because you can end up very dehydrated. Whatever you eat after the 3rd day is the best meal of your life even though it's typically very simple. I would usually have something like a soup or very basic sandwich, it was still usually the most tasty thing I had ever eaten.
It's probably a silly thing to do, but I keep fairly meticulous notes about food I make now (including weighing-out ingredients on a kitchen scale). I don't want to have another experience like my mythical sandwich.
Perhaps you do want those experiences, actually. Would your memory of this sandwich be as sweet if you were able to replicate whenever you want? How much of the seasoning here comes from its rarity?
There are things in my life I carefully mete out because I don't want to "burn out" then novelty. I'd like to think I could do that in this case, but I don't know how it would change the memory.
I feel strongly that our memories are a "lossy destructive read" type of mechanism (core memory that "forgets" to write-after-read sometimes). I often think about how I'm permuting memories I recall, even as I'm enjoying recalling them.
That got me paying attention to how hunger effects food enjoyment.
I cured my lifelong pickiness thanks to an excessively long diet. The pickiness had tempered itself somewhat over the years, but my food choices were still quite limited compared to your average person.
On that diet, I lost about 50 pounds over 8 months and got to the leanest I've ever been, probably under 15% bodyfat. I knew better than to diet that long and the negative effects of diet fatigue, but dammit, I was determined and had to keep going!
The last few months I was constantly ravenous, tired, having trouble sleeping and absolutely obsessed with food. A few weeks later was Xmas dinner with the family, and when I arrived, I was shocked to discover that EVERYTHING on the table looked absolutely delicious to me. Foods I wouldn't have even imagined trying before. My pickiness was so severe, even attempting a bite would have previously caused a vomit response. I ate everything on that table that year and enjoyed nearly all of it. My family was stunned! It was like a dam broke, and now I am willing to try just about anything. It's been a great increase to my quality of life.
As an aside, I always hated hearing "What would you do if you were starving?" growing up. My contention was that if I were truly starving, any pickiness would disappear quite quickly. I mean people have resorted to cannibalism during times of famine! This experience completely validated my theory.
If you've ever done an extended fast (at least 36 hours, but ideally 60+) you'll know how rich your senses of smell and taste can be. In something as basic as a baked potato you can taste all sorts of nuances of sweetness, nuttiness and savoriness. Something like a steak explodes with such flavor as to border on a psychedelic experience.
I recently returned to a favorite cafe after a long time away. The amazing food I had many years ago seemed now to be just fine but not memorable.
I think the difference was the context. It was a date with a relationship that was going well. There was a lot of excitement. Now that relationship deteriorated and there is no excitement, and the food isn't as good. Maybe our memories are conflating the two things.
Show some young children the Apollo 11 movie. (Literally "Apollo 11.")
I was just going to show them the launch, but they all demanded to stay up late, told me to stop fast forwarding, and then had to sit and watch it again with each set of grandparents.
Another thing you can do is make sure critical parts of the Artemis streams (takeoff, approach to the moon, and landing) are on when you have children around. I texted the links to everyone I know.
I hear you. I'm chasing a simple dish of fish and pomegranate sauce I had in (Eastern European) Georgia 25 years ago, haven't been back but go to every Georgian restaurant and hope one day to see it on the menu.
I believe there are studies about how the environment and who you are with changes your perception of food as well (it was some Radiolab podcast episode I believe). So you will never again have such a great sandwich, even if the exact same sandwich was brought back to you now. But I think it might be good that way - the free flashback and remembrance.
I remember one of my own "best steak ever" moments. It just never hit the same, even though I've had steaks 4x the price since then. I've also had a "best baguette ever" moment and I'm pretty sure it was just a regular baguette but my brain released an incredible amount of dopamine.
If you watch none of the rest of the music, at least watch him play Roland The Headless Thompson Gunner at the end; kind of an amazing song, especially given when Zevon wrote it.
There has been a visible shift in the replies on this web site since about April of this year.
If you know what to look for, you realize there are far fewer humans bothering to post than before. It's like the proverbial scales falling from your eyes once you see it.
Ever since I did the "The Science of Well-Being" coursera course way back when, and got into mindfulness, I always try to saviour my daily sandwich! And also mix it up a bit (cutting it differently, using new ingredients). Both of these are tiny things in isolation but if you do stuff like this throughout the day it makes a measurable difference to happiness.
Every ten minutes of worry becomes ten seconds of relief. Every tasteful delight is followed by three moments of gastric distress. Every fifteen second laugh is built on half an hour of stress/worry/trauma/hurt.
Enjoy every hedonic pleasure. But the balance sheet doesn’t look good even if you always do. It’s either all just a raw deal or we need to look beyond the low- and high-minded enjoyments.
"The winters are cold... but I can't complain. My socks have holes... but again, do I complain? I do not. The oldest needs braces... the youngest once sneezed for three days straight... but who could complain? They're gifts."
"Children?"
"All of it. The cold, the holes."
For all of the complaining we can do about our hardships, it's a gift to even be able to complain. When someone says, "Life is good", they're right even if you feel like things are shitty -- because life itself, being here and alive, to be able to feel and to think, is a wonderful gift.
I think you're getting at the heart of the sentiment behind the original quote better than the blog post.
The blog seems to be treating it as aspirational -- a goal. A puzzle to be understood and applied to make our lives richer. It's more of a perspective shift.
When you really get it, you won't think you're supposed to like bad sandwiches -- you'll realize what a gift any sandwich is. What a gift it is to sit in any crummy airport eating a soggy sandwich. You won't have to try to like it, you'll cry with gratitude at how lucky you are to even be there.
I find myself forgetting the point. The goal might not be to exactly enjoy every sandwich. Some sandwiches are just straight up trash. Maybe the goal is to notice that you’re eating one.
Taking Mr. Zevon's advice to "enjoy every sandwich" literally is amazing. I think he'd appreciate the absurdity of the post.
I’ve been getting into photography recently. I enjoy capturing the beauty of light in everyday moments - you’d think I’d run out of things but after years in the same place, breathtaking moments are a daily occurrence (if I am looking).
On one of my walks, I had the realization that if I were blind and suddenly re-gained my vision, I would be overwhelmed with joy and gratitude to be able to see these things. And yet it is not natural for the sighted to feel overwhelmed with joy and gratitude every time they open their eyes.
I try to practice gratitude daily; at first it was difficult to come up with things, but my perspective has since broadened. I am deeply grateful that I can see the way light filters through haze in late September. I can hear beautiful music (an unlimited supply, of anything I want, at any time!). I can run (to think, I used to consider this a burden!). I could go on listing things for hours.
You can experience joy in the good things in your life before the loss. Enjoy every sandwich - even the soggy ones.
I think the post is actually saying exactly the opposite.
It is saying that savoring a life fully means savoring all of its varied moments, even the bad ones. Enjoy the highs, but also pay attention to your suffering in the lows because those moments are also meaningful pages in your story.
I've written it elsewhere but I'm going to write it again. Somehow, work to enjoy today as well as to save for tomorrow. If you wait for things, you might not be able to physically able to do what you want to do, or the people you want to do it with might not be there. If you don't save you might not have the resources.
Enjoy every sandwich is a nice, mildly flippant way of saying that one should enjoy every moment. You only get so many and you don't know how many that is. Jackson Browne's For A Dancer also addresses this.
My favorite quote from my favorite, underappreciated classic rocker. The whole quote is worth reprinting:
"You put more value on every minute. You do. I mean I always thought I kind of did that. I really always enjoyed myself, but it’s more valuable now. You’re reminded to enjoy every sandwich and every minute of playing with the guys and being with the kids and everything."
I have a t shirt with a photo portrait of Warren with "Enjoy Every Sandwich" on it. I almost always get a comment from a fellow Zevon fan when I wear it.
When my mom's cancer came to a head and she passed, it was very, very fast. She didn't even internalize it until she became bedridden and had to admit that she couldn't do stairs or stand to brush her teeth.
Our last phone conversation started with her telling me that she had a month left to live, and then she mentioned that she offered to watch my nephew for a family event in a month because she wouldn't be able to go. A few days after the call I arrived to telecommute from her house, only to not leave because her digestive system stopped working. It still took her a day to admit to herself that she was truly dying.
That's obvious. Who doesn't notice that? I think if I were terminally ill I'd seek things I enjoy, and savor them, and avoid bad sandwiches. In good health, I'd ask what made that sandwich bad and think about how to improve it.
Both cases are compatible with "noticing that you are eating a sandwich". The issue usually is that its much more difficult to "notice it" if you are thinking about how to improve it. Its like the classic parable of the camel, the needle eye and the rich. But its not impossible.
Quite the contrary. It's the difference between active eating and passive eating. It is the active eater who appreciates what he is eating at the deepest level, being capable of recreating and modifying his food. It is the same with every endeavor.
I agree, but I may be talking about another level of "noticing". More about observing the act and being conscious about what is happening. Thats easier it you are not rationalizing it. If you are an expert on a topic to the point where it becomes second nature, then you probably again have it easier to enter into that state, which can be a door to great creativity. But you can also get lost in all of the details that take you away from the moment.
This hits me like a brick wall with my young children. Seeing them change so rapidly is a glimpse into how short life is and how often an experience unknowingly becomes the last of its kind.
There is so much to be gained by slowing down, focusing on what you can be grateful for, and not striving for more.
don't you just go back to your old habits once this realization has passed.
we were desiged to want more it impossible to override that design.
No, it isn't. Think about monks and so on. Some people live properly modest lives, not hedonistic ones.
I guess you can convince to want something totally different like bliss, moksha or whatever but the basic instinct to want is still there . Not sure why that particular form is more desirable. I know some personally and they constantly struggle with wanting that not being able to achieve.
It's not impossible (and I'd substitute "evolved" for "designed").
Yes, wanting "More" [time, money, love, status] is pretty firmly ingrained as an advantageous trait. But you can override your instincts (e.g. declining a drink when thirsty, if you learn the glass of water contains poison). And it is possible to learn to want what you already have.
How? Practice three things: Compassion, Attention, and Gratitude. (Pick any two, and the third will follow almost automatically.)
That's the central thesis of an excellent book, "How to Want What You Have" by Dr Timothy Miller. It changed my life.
The title of that book is marvelous and packs a lot into just 6 words.
Split the difference and say “designed by evolution?” I think designed captures something important and doesn’t have to imply a non-materialist view.
says who?
observation
are you using "designed" figuratively, or are you arguing for creationism?
former for sure
The interpretation of this I love most is the visual of a sheep, satisfied enough that they lay down instead of grazing or drinking. This posture is mentioned repeatedly in the Bible.
I imagine most religions and philosophies have similar.
amen.
Not if you have a transformed and renewed mind. Once you taste the fruit of life, drink the water, eat the bread, drink the blood - nothing else will suffice.
This is a hard teaching and not all can accept it. Those that do will find peace, life, meaning, and rest.
Likewise, I already have some regrets about not being as present with the first year of my second kid because of various other life distractions/stresses. Increasingly my biggest fear/worry/anxiety in life is that I just won’t be present for it - which is a self-fulfilling prophecy!
I don't think it has to be if it forces you back into the moment instead of sitting in the anxiety.
Our daughter turned thirteen this year. Counting the number of remaining family summer vacations, Christmases, etc, remaining really hit home for me this year.
Some of the days have been very, very long. The weeks, months, and years have been so short.
This passage from Trading Bases by Joe Peta chokes me up everytime.
Top 10, unranked:
- Raging Bull or Brian Allen from Star Meats in Berkeley, CA
- Shaking Beef, Dinosaur Sandwiches in San Francisco / Daily City, CA
- Turkey Cranberry from the GBC in Berkeley, CA
- Lemongrass tofu from Lokal Sandwiches in Los Angeles, CA
- Pastrami on rye from Sarges Deli in NYC, NY
- Fried Chicken Sandwich from Bakesale Betty's in Berkeley, CA
- Dad's BLT or fried egg sandwiches
- Any sandwich from Mom paired with potato salad
- Wife's Cemita
- Turkey sandwich from "The Sandwich Shop", Dogpatch in San Francisco, CA
Oooh, I love this. A few years ago, I started keeping track of my favorite coffeeshops. They're not "the best ever" by some objective metric; I'm not Zagat. But they're special to me!
- Tradition Coffee Roasters, Kailua, HI
- Offset Coffee, LA, CA
- Igam Coffee, Brooklyn, NY
- City League, Brooklyn, NY
- Ozo Coffee, Boulder, CO
- Odyssey Coffee, Ocean Grove, NJ
I assume your metrics are great coffee and excellent ambiance.
The best coffee I've ever had was from The Library Specialty Coffee in Toronto. The location though is so minimal and uninviting that I couldn't rank it very highly as a coffeeshop.
Where I live (Austin) some of the best coffee I've had is from a trailer, so that obviously wouldn't rank either.
I'm not sure I've been to any coffeeshops I would rank very highly... Sadly, the best is probably the Starbucks near where I live. The people who work there are extraordinarily nice and the place is very clean, quiet, and comfortable. Too bad the coffee isn't better.
I never thought about it before, but I guess the place is more important to me than the drink when determining where I want to go for a cup of coffee.
I'm not vegetarian, but Grand Central Bakery in Seattle/Portland had a Maitake sandwich that I loved enough to reproduce at home:
"Crisp-roasted maitake mushrooms with garlicky labneh, fresh local raab, warm Middle Eastern Spices and Mama Lil's spicy pickled peppers on a toasted Ciabatta roll."
The raab and the mushrooms (sliced into sheets) were seared crisp. I substituted harissa mixed with mayo or greek yogurt for the sauce.
Grand Central is indeed da bomb.
great list.
in addition to anything your parents make, sometimes the best sandwich is the one my wife makes for my kids and they don't finish.
Forgot Arby's Beef 'n Cheddar but otherwise looks like a good list
We all have favorites, but that's not the point WZ was making.
top 10 piña coladas from Trader Vic's
You have been unusually blessed in the sandwich department of your life.
the sandwich shop in dogpatch has been closed for years. their building was remodeled for startups (kind of a meh patchwork of steel panels, some corten and some not), and they tried to move over a couple blocks, but the pandemic got them.
oh no! charming place, even more so for the reasonably priced lunch
IMHO this is Beginner Level, basic enjoyment, at the cost of cardiovascular health, due to those saturated fats that the man in the sandwich shop never tells you about.
To up your sandwich enjoyment game, what you want is a bread making machine, ideally by Panasonic, with plenty of flour in the cupboards and a well-rehearsed routine of putting the bread on.
Here you get delayed gratification since it takes three minutes to load the machine and four hours for it to bake a loaf. You get proper bakery smells, which is a bonus, and the freshest bread in town (the second you unload the machine).
Freshness is a hack with any bread you buy. It is usually harmless additives that keep it 'fresh', but there is no need for the 'harmless additives' when you have a Panasonic machine. You won't find yourself adding weird chemicals, but you could find yourself adding, nuts, seeds, berries and other fruit to your bakes, to suit your whims or preferences of your guests.
Sometimes some people notice your fresh bread and insist on telling you how much better their sourdough is (that they made once in lockdown) or how that their local bakery makes far nicer bread than your pathetic little Panasonic machine. So you get an extra 'last laugh' from having to endure these ad-hoc lectures on sourdough that is just not in the same league as your favourite bread made effortless by your lovely machine.
You might miss out on interactions with that sandwich store (they rob you slowly, hence the staff will know your name and preferences, if a regular), however, people outside the sourdough cult are always impressed by home made bread, even if you insist it was effortlessly made.
Making your own bread connects you to our history of making bread, plus you get a much healthier product, arguably real bread, unlike that nonsense that is commercially sold as 'bread'.
Eating a sandwich now, haven't bought one for maybe five years.
I think you missed the point.
Jesus Christ, you somehow felt the need to tell another human being that their own favorite personal experiences are objectively wrong.
No such thing as a bad sandwich. People are pretending not to like things.
I remember a notable triangular sandwich packed in a cardboard box and sold on the motorway in France. I ate it while my jet lagged toddler cried and cried and we tried to get to Provence before nightfall.
There is such a thing as a bad sandwich.
There is something truly rotten about service station sandwiches in France. I once had a croque monsieur that was so execrable it made the paper bag appetising by comparison.
There’s definitely a scale, though. Some sandwiches are okay, some are magical.
I don't know, Sandwiches of History has some real stinkers every now and then, such as the Cheese and Banana Sandwich, the Clam and Cheese Sandwich, or the Peanut-Butter Sandwich.
Cheese and Banana Sandwich: https://youtu.be/uUzO19tgwZc
Clam and Cheese Sandwich: https://youtu.be/31bZ-ReB51U
Peanut-Butter Sandwich: https://youtu.be/1Bmw1JpNY90
Sounds delicious. Banana on pizza is a very beloved dish in the Nordics.
So many tasty things people miss out on due to peer pressure and being afraid to give "strange" food a try.
I agree with the sentiment, but there's probably also a cultural thing. I love root beer, for instance, but from what I understand, many (most?) Europeans who've tried it think it's disgusting and tastes like medicine.
The thing I find fascinating about the root beer thing is that I don't recall root beer being an acquired taste. Like, I remember cola being a acquired taste, and Dr. Pepper being an acquired taste, but root beer, best I can recall, I enjoyed right off the bat. Same with most North Americans I know. And yeah, my overseas cousins find the stuff foul.
Yes there is. There are a lot people have no idea what makes a good sandwich. They will happily put turkey, Miracle Whip, and two Kraft singles on 11-grain honey wheat Wonderbread and go about their day fully convinced that they made something delicious and healthy.
The fact that >50% of Italian sub shops default to not putting onions on their torpedoes is a testament to how far we've fallen as a culture.
This comes across as projecting personal preferences as universally superior.
These aren't preferences so much as they are facts. I am very much not messing around. You can tell how serious I am by how I equated the decline of western civilization to a lack of sandwich vegetables.
It may be a terrible sandwich if I'm the center ingredient (for me).
It’s a metaphor bud. There are certainly bad sandwiches.
Woosh.
Your tastebuds must not be too sensitive.
I can't even put things like mayonnaise, mustard, ketchup, ect, in my mouth without gagging.
Needless to say, for me, any sandwich with those in it is the most vile thing I can put in my mouth.
There relevance of this vague piece to HN really escapes me
enjoy every post
HN has a bunch of men of a certain age, and at some point people contemplate their mortality.
This is one of my favorite quotes and I'm glad to see it discussed here.
My favorite interpretation is focusing on the beauty of how even such a mundane thing as a sandwich is a unique experience. Someone made it by-hand, the ingredients have their own backstory in arriving in the present moment, and the taste is greater than the sum of its parts because of all the competing and complementary flavors.
Sandwiches hide in plain sight and even when they aren't great they are unique and will underscore how good your next great one is.
I was seven years old in 1969 during the moon landing, with the whole extended family gathered around the enormous TV console. It was a very memorable event for me, but the thing I most remember is that mom made me and my friend a simple BLT with mayo. For some reason it was like a visitation from Jesus for both of us. We spent the next few years making them or begging for them relentlessly. We thought it was our own thing. Over the next fifty years I've tried to recapture that, but never entirely succeeded in reaching the same culinary apogee. Still trying. Every BLT comes with free a flashback to that hot July day. And a remembrance of that best of friends who we lost twelve years ago.
Still trying.
Brands matter. See if you can match the brands that your mother used; especially the mayonnaise. Bacon will be harder to match.
In 1969, my family would have made its own mayonnaise, so try that, too.
If I want a flashback to my childhood, it's peanut butter and jelly. But it has to be Skippy peanut butter on Wonder bread with Smuckers jelly, and freezing cold whole milk. Anything deviation doesn't trigger the same brain cells.
Why is bacon harder to match? Was bacon different in the 60s?
Bacons vary widely even across brands today. It is very much not a simple commodity product. You are taking a living animal which may be of several different breeds and raised in any number of environments. You butcher it, itself a skilled occupation. Then cure it using a number of highly variable ingredients and parameters for a variable amount of time. Slice it with varying thickness.
Cured meats are entire world unto themselves. I have had bacon that tasted like a salty strip of cardboard, and bacon that is a peppery, savory, chewy/crispy revelation.
In many ways the BLT is sort of the perfect example food for showing how non-commoditized ingredients actually are. It's only five ingredients: bread, bacon, lettuce, tomato, mayonnaise. But each of those ingredients can vary extremely widely.
Take some generic white bread, thin cheap bacon, old iceberg lettuce, out of season grocery store tomatoes, and Miracle Whip and you'll have a result that you wouldn't understand why anyone on Earth would eat.
Then get some good bakery sourdough, thick cut heavily peppered bacon from a small farm that treats their pigs well, fresh butter or Bibb lettuce, late summer tomatoes from your own garden (the best tomatoes simply don't ship), and whip up a batch of mayo yourself without any preservatives using good eggs and oil. It will likely be one of the best meals you've ever eaten.
Also try being 7 years old again, and watching the first moon landing on live TV.
In remembrance of times past...your very own madeleine moment.
I have a similar thing here, albeit not tied to as vivid a memory of a day or of people-- just a memory of food.
I've been chasing a "white whale" bacon / egg / cheddar on grilled Texas toast sandwich I made 20-ish years ago that I've never been able to replicate. I didn't keep track of the particular bacon or cheddar I used, and I don't recall if the eggs were the farm co-op eggs we used to get or plain old grocery eggs. I should have taken notes but didn't.
It's probably a silly thing to do, but I keep fairly meticulous notes about food I make now (including weighing-out ingredients on a kitchen scale). I don't want to have another experience like my mythical sandwich.
My wife has a good point about my quest: I can't replicate my hunger level that day. That got me paying attention to how hunger effects food enjoyment. I now make a point of planning my eating ahead of special meals to maximize enjoyment. It's shocking, to me, how much a little hunger makes food better.
That reminds me of a day almost 30 years ago where I spent my last money and had a big pizza gyros. I went from starving to completely satiated. It was absolutely glorius. I’m still a big fan of pizza Gyros thanks to this special memorable occasion.
Food matters.
In college I did an apple fast twice. Only eat apples and drink water for 3 days. You have to be careful doing this because you can end up very dehydrated. Whatever you eat after the 3rd day is the best meal of your life even though it's typically very simple. I would usually have something like a soup or very basic sandwich, it was still usually the most tasty thing I had ever eaten.
Perhaps you do want those experiences, actually. Would your memory of this sandwich be as sweet if you were able to replicate whenever you want? How much of the seasoning here comes from its rarity?
I will concede that you may have a point.
There are things in my life I carefully mete out because I don't want to "burn out" then novelty. I'd like to think I could do that in this case, but I don't know how it would change the memory.
I feel strongly that our memories are a "lossy destructive read" type of mechanism (core memory that "forgets" to write-after-read sometimes). I often think about how I'm permuting memories I recall, even as I'm enjoying recalling them.
I cured my lifelong pickiness thanks to an excessively long diet. The pickiness had tempered itself somewhat over the years, but my food choices were still quite limited compared to your average person.
On that diet, I lost about 50 pounds over 8 months and got to the leanest I've ever been, probably under 15% bodyfat. I knew better than to diet that long and the negative effects of diet fatigue, but dammit, I was determined and had to keep going!
The last few months I was constantly ravenous, tired, having trouble sleeping and absolutely obsessed with food. A few weeks later was Xmas dinner with the family, and when I arrived, I was shocked to discover that EVERYTHING on the table looked absolutely delicious to me. Foods I wouldn't have even imagined trying before. My pickiness was so severe, even attempting a bite would have previously caused a vomit response. I ate everything on that table that year and enjoyed nearly all of it. My family was stunned! It was like a dam broke, and now I am willing to try just about anything. It's been a great increase to my quality of life.
As an aside, I always hated hearing "What would you do if you were starving?" growing up. My contention was that if I were truly starving, any pickiness would disappear quite quickly. I mean people have resorted to cannibalism during times of famine! This experience completely validated my theory.
This reminds me of a quote, "hunger is the best condiment".
If you've ever done an extended fast (at least 36 hours, but ideally 60+) you'll know how rich your senses of smell and taste can be. In something as basic as a baked potato you can taste all sorts of nuances of sweetness, nuttiness and savoriness. Something like a steak explodes with such flavor as to border on a psychedelic experience.
I recently returned to a favorite cafe after a long time away. The amazing food I had many years ago seemed now to be just fine but not memorable.
I think the difference was the context. It was a date with a relationship that was going well. There was a lot of excitement. Now that relationship deteriorated and there is no excitement, and the food isn't as good. Maybe our memories are conflating the two things.
Show some young children the Apollo 11 movie. (Literally "Apollo 11.")
I was just going to show them the launch, but they all demanded to stay up late, told me to stop fast forwarding, and then had to sit and watch it again with each set of grandparents.
Another thing you can do is make sure critical parts of the Artemis streams (takeoff, approach to the moon, and landing) are on when you have children around. I texted the links to everyone I know.
One thing I know for sure. You won't do it with bagged lettuce. You need a cool head of lettuce. Carry on.
I hear you. I'm chasing a simple dish of fish and pomegranate sauce I had in (Eastern European) Georgia 25 years ago, haven't been back but go to every Georgian restaurant and hope one day to see it on the menu.
I believe there are studies about how the environment and who you are with changes your perception of food as well (it was some Radiolab podcast episode I believe). So you will never again have such a great sandwich, even if the exact same sandwich was brought back to you now. But I think it might be good that way - the free flashback and remembrance.
I remember one of my own "best steak ever" moments. It just never hit the same, even though I've had steaks 4x the price since then. I've also had a "best baguette ever" moment and I'm pretty sure it was just a regular baguette but my brain released an incredible amount of dopamine.
Here's the full interview referred in the article in case you're interested:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=giTi8KWSZl4
If you watch none of the rest of the music, at least watch him play Roland The Headless Thompson Gunner at the end; kind of an amazing song, especially given when Zevon wrote it.
WTF, are most of the replies bots? The article isn't about sandwich and we have plenty of comments that have gone on talking about that...
WTF, are most of the replies bots?
Welcome to HN in 2026.
There has been a visible shift in the replies on this web site since about April of this year.
If you know what to look for, you realize there are far fewer humans bothering to post than before. It's like the proverbial scales falling from your eyes once you see it.
I noticed this too and thought I was going crazy.
A lot of people just read the title and not the article
Ever since I did the "The Science of Well-Being" coursera course way back when, and got into mindfulness, I always try to saviour my daily sandwich! And also mix it up a bit (cutting it differently, using new ingredients). Both of these are tiny things in isolation but if you do stuff like this throughout the day it makes a measurable difference to happiness.
I also like to do this, only I say the words
Every ten minutes of worry becomes ten seconds of relief. Every tasteful delight is followed by three moments of gastric distress. Every fifteen second laugh is built on half an hour of stress/worry/trauma/hurt.
Enjoy every hedonic pleasure. But the balance sheet doesn’t look good even if you always do. It’s either all just a raw deal or we need to look beyond the low- and high-minded enjoyments.
I had a similar epiphany watching S1E5 of Fargo.
"The winters are cold... but I can't complain. My socks have holes... but again, do I complain? I do not. The oldest needs braces... the youngest once sneezed for three days straight... but who could complain? They're gifts."
"Children?"
"All of it. The cold, the holes."
For all of the complaining we can do about our hardships, it's a gift to even be able to complain. When someone says, "Life is good", they're right even if you feel like things are shitty -- because life itself, being here and alive, to be able to feel and to think, is a wonderful gift.
I think you're getting at the heart of the sentiment behind the original quote better than the blog post.
The blog seems to be treating it as aspirational -- a goal. A puzzle to be understood and applied to make our lives richer. It's more of a perspective shift.
When you really get it, you won't think you're supposed to like bad sandwiches -- you'll realize what a gift any sandwich is. What a gift it is to sit in any crummy airport eating a soggy sandwich. You won't have to try to like it, you'll cry with gratitude at how lucky you are to even be there.
Taking Mr. Zevon's advice to "enjoy every sandwich" literally is amazing. I think he'd appreciate the absurdity of the post.
Somewhat disappointed this is more boomer health-anxiety blogspam. It's not really about sandwiches.
I swear ever since Ozempic came out, there's been this huge marketing push from everyone and their dog for anything tangentially related.
Seems unintentionally ironic that most sandwiches are so unhealthy.
I’ve been getting into photography recently. I enjoy capturing the beauty of light in everyday moments - you’d think I’d run out of things but after years in the same place, breathtaking moments are a daily occurrence (if I am looking).
On one of my walks, I had the realization that if I were blind and suddenly re-gained my vision, I would be overwhelmed with joy and gratitude to be able to see these things. And yet it is not natural for the sighted to feel overwhelmed with joy and gratitude every time they open their eyes.
I try to practice gratitude daily; at first it was difficult to come up with things, but my perspective has since broadened. I am deeply grateful that I can see the way light filters through haze in late September. I can hear beautiful music (an unlimited supply, of anything I want, at any time!). I can run (to think, I used to consider this a burden!). I could go on listing things for hours.
You can experience joy in the good things in your life before the loss. Enjoy every sandwich - even the soggy ones.
My favorite thing about photography is the way that it reminds me to actually see the world around me.
It hasn't been updated in a while, but sometimes I still get lost just watching rotating sandwiches and dreaming:
https://rotatingsandwiches.com/
Another way to interpret the advice is not to buy the airport sandwich.
I think the post is actually saying exactly the opposite.
It is saying that savoring a life fully means savoring all of its varied moments, even the bad ones. Enjoy the highs, but also pay attention to your suffering in the lows because those moments are also meaningful pages in your story.
I've written it elsewhere but I'm going to write it again. Somehow, work to enjoy today as well as to save for tomorrow. If you wait for things, you might not be able to physically able to do what you want to do, or the people you want to do it with might not be there. If you don't save you might not have the resources.
Enjoy every sandwich is a nice, mildly flippant way of saying that one should enjoy every moment. You only get so many and you don't know how many that is. Jackson Browne's For A Dancer also addresses this.
And in the end, it's never enough.
When I escaped California for Washington, I found myself with an extra 12% of my gross income in my pocket every month.
It’s been pretty easy for me to justify allocating this to pure enjoyment. I’m otherwise a pretty strict saver and planner.
My favorite quote from my favorite, underappreciated classic rocker. The whole quote is worth reprinting:
"You put more value on every minute. You do. I mean I always thought I kind of did that. I really always enjoyed myself, but it’s more valuable now. You’re reminded to enjoy every sandwich and every minute of playing with the guys and being with the kids and everything."
I have a t shirt with a photo portrait of Warren with "Enjoy Every Sandwich" on it. I almost always get a comment from a fellow Zevon fan when I wear it.
I got a balmuda toaster (gimmick?) and I do enjoy sandwiches.
but I've had to explain and defend that toaster.
When my mom's cancer came to a head and she passed, it was very, very fast. She didn't even internalize it until she became bedridden and had to admit that she couldn't do stairs or stand to brush her teeth.
Our last phone conversation started with her telling me that she had a month left to live, and then she mentioned that she offered to watch my nephew for a family event in a month because she wouldn't be able to go. A few days after the call I arrived to telecommute from her house, only to not leave because her digestive system stopped working. It still took her a day to admit to herself that she was truly dying.