Larry and I were talking about sandwiches today. Favorite childhood sandwiches. I'm not talking about peanut butter and jelly. I'm talking about those kind of sandwiches kids make when left to their own devices.
Like banana sandwiches. White bread, butter, and sliced bananas. Ah heaven! or it was when I was a kid.
Like banana sandwiches. White bread, butter, and sliced bananas. Ah heaven! or it was when I was a kid.
Banana and peanut butter was a gourmet version, and could be varied by using apple slices instead of bananas.
There were sugar sandwiches too. Completely non-nourishing and completely a favorite. White bread, butter, and lots of white sugar. Now I can't even imagine trying to eat a sugar sandwich, but as a kid I thought they were just about as good as chocolate chip cookies. There was something about the way the sugar crunched against the soft butter...
When sugar wasn't available, we made honey sandwiches. Or syrup sandwiches, which were even better if we made them with peanut butter instead of butter. Best of the best, however, were marshmallow creme sandwiches, gooey with white sweetness that stuck to face, lips, hair and hands.
Mayonnaise sandwiches were another favorite. Just bread and mayo, spread thick. We didn't like mustard or ketchup sandwiches, though. I can't think why, given all the other things we relished.
Our choic
es were limited by what was available in Mom's cabinets. She always had Marmite on hand, and she would make sandwiches from it that made us sick to look at--and smell? Whew! Marmite is a yeasty by-product of beer-making, or something like that. Sounds delish, doesn't it? Mom loved it. She also liked marmalade which we despised. Now I like it, but when I was young I thought it was bitter and a waste of the sugar used to make it. Maybe that's why she liked it--marmalade and Marmite were two things she could pretty much guarantee would be left alone in the cabinet.Mom made a few other strange sandwiches. Like fried egg, cheese and ketchup. Or fried smelts on bread and butter (smelts are little fish). Or fried bologna sandwiches (there seems to be a fried theme here...). I know a lot of people love fried bologna sandwiches, my husband among them. I once had a supervisor who knew every restaurant in the area that offered fried bologna and could give an educated commentary on the merits of each place. I look at fried bologna and reach for Zantac.
Somehow we survived what we ate as children. (I'd bet some of you reading this ate even stranger combinations and lived to tell the tale.) Thank goodness our tastes change as we get older.
Or do they?
Think I'll go make a sugar sandwich.
Not.
oh yes. I used to eat Butter and Sugar sandwiches. A slice of white Wonder bread spread thick with real butter and then as much sugar as that butter would hold! This was energy food! We could play hard, run fast and wait for supper after a sugar sandwich! Thanks for the memory . . .
ReplyDeleteYes - sugar 'butties' as they are called in the North of England, banana and syrup - I remember them all. I didn't realise that children on the other side of the world were eating them as well though.
ReplyDeletemy swampy talks of the suger sandwich, he is from the midlands and until i met him had never heard of such a thing~i think it must be a north/south divide thing!
ReplyDeletenow marmite~oohhh i love marmite even now (swampy feels quite ill at the smell!) boiled eggs with marmite soldiers...yum!
I used to pack a little picnic basket with ketchup sandwiches and walk down to my great-grandmother's house to visit. She thought my mom had lost her mind for letting me eat them. Of course, my great-grandmother used to let us poke straws in oranges and suck the juice out rather than make us eat the whole orange.
ReplyDeleteOh Susie,
ReplyDeleteFunny how just a description of a sandwich can bring back the smell and taste! I remember peanut butter and syrup sandwiches and of course the sugar sandwich (what's the difference between that and cinnamon sugar on toast?). My favorite/worst memory is opening my lunch to discover I had Maggie's lunch and she had made a COOKIE Sandwich! The cookie even had a bite out of it! I was mortified...I think I have forgiven her for taking my lunch that day. Course she was extremely disappointed with my sandwich (which was probably something normal like pb&j). Too funny,
love you Theresa
You guys have me laughing out loud this morning! Laoi and Rowan, I wonder if the sugar sandwich is a British thing? Mom was from Cambridgeshire, so maybe that's why we ate them. It will be interesting to see if anyone in the states also remembers eating them. And Theresa, you're right--not much different than cinnamon toast. but a COOKIE sandwich? Only Maggie would do that.
ReplyDeleteWe didn't have real butter, of course--good ol' margarine on our sandwiches back then, unless we had commodity butter. Sometimes that would show up, I'm not sure if Dad got it from Fort Belvoir or how we got it. Mom loved it, though.
I forgot to mention my own favorite, cucumber sandwiches! with butter, salt and pepper. Umm, ummm good.
Laura, you created a vivid image with your ketchup sandwiches in a little basket! How cute you must have been, going to your grandma's. I've got to try that straw in an orange; I've never done that.
Mom used to make Matthew and I "Tweety Bird Sandwiches" which were an invention of hers. Basically, it was scrambled eggs between two pieces of bread. She got the idea from watching Sylvester try to eat Tweety Bird that way on the cartoons with us. Even to this day, we sometimes make them.
ReplyDeleteWe made scrambled eggs sandwiches too, Jason--I'd forgotten about them. Ours were on buttered toast, with salt and pepper.
ReplyDeleteUgh, Marmite... you love it or loathe it and I loooooathe it. I remember sugar sandwiches too but my mother always intercepted them.
ReplyDeleteMy kids get sick at my adult favourite: grilled cheese sandwiches made with Emmental (Swiss) and sliced black olives, fried in butter. Nom nom nom...
In America, Hershey bar sandwiches on plain white Wonder bread, oh yeah. Maybe some peanut butter for special occasions LOL
Great memories and great post!!
I told you in one of my posts the other day that I liked to talk about food when I was trying to lose weight. Well,I've never heard of sugar sandwiches or marmite. We used to eat jelly and butter sandwiches, tomato and mayo (now I add sliced cucumbers to it, too), Charley loves ketchup on his egg sandwiches, Mom liked mayo and peanut butter and we used to smash butter into syrup with a fork on a plate and then sop it up with a slice of light bread. . . mmmm that was good. I'm starving, Susanne, I've got to go eat supper now.
ReplyDeleteI stand amazed at the decadent, astounding, disgusting and just plain weird things we can put between two slices of bread. Susan, Hershey bar sandwiches? As a kid, I'd have killed for one--but I didn't know about them. As an adult, I think OMG!
ReplyDeleteMarmite, I am sure, was created for those who want their purgatory on earth. But Mom loved it. She loved sardine and kipper sandwiches too. Gross. I'm just sayin'. I'm sure it was all very healthy. But yuck! Janet, your mayo and peanut butter sounds just...well...it just sounds nasty. But what do I know? I used to like iceberg lettuce and mayo sandwiches.
I expect if we thought about it, we could come up with many, many more.