The Lifesaving Sandwich

“I will drink Champagne anywhere, anytime, with anyone,” a former wine merchant friend of mine was fond of saying. I feel that way about Champagne, too, but I feel even more so about The Sandwich. It is alwaysà propos.

The Sandwich is what I eat when there’s nothing to eat. 95% of the time, we have all its components at the ready. Carrots, peanut butter, bread. That’s three-fourths of The Sandwich. Mae Ploy sweet chili sauce is the other quarter. It must be Mae Ploy. All other sweet chili sauces are pale imitations.

The idea for The Sandwich came from the documentary Sandwiches That You Will Like (get it on Netflix; I promise you won’t regret it). The filmmaker, Rick Sebak, visits New York City’s Peanut Butter & Co., where they serve a grilled chicken-peanut butter sandwich. I don’t love grilled chicken, and I especially don’t believe in chicken on sandwiches or pizza. What I do love are salad rolls, especially the peanut dipping sauce. Wheels turned in my brain. After a few wobbly experiments, The Sandwich was born.

Whole-grain bread is the best, especially if it’s studded with sunflower seeds or nubbly bits of cracked wheat. I always toast the bread lightly first, for optimal textural contrast. Also, the warmth of the just-toasted bread heightens the richness of the peanut butter.

Cut the carrots in matchsticks. Don’t get lazy and chunk them up any old way. The lattice of carrot shards creates a network that traps as much Mae Ploy as possible. And the more Mae Ploy on this sandwich, the better.

You can use any kind of peanut butter. Chunky, creamy. Natural or processed. Salted or no salt added. Just be sure to use a lot. Spread it on both sides of the sandwich. This is good fat that will keep you going strong. Also, it tastes good. And it keeps the carrot-matchsticks glued in place.

Fresh lettuce is nice, but not required. Long sprigs of fresh cilantro, stems and all, are even better. Slices of avocado won’t hurt. Grilled chicken is right out.

Just before serving, on goes the Mae Ploy. It’s not like jam; it’s loose and runny and will make a sticky-slippery mess of your sandwich no matter what you do. You have not made The Sandwich the right way if it’s not a dripping wreck. (Wrap the sandwich in a few paper towels or napkins to create a holder of sorts, if you must).

Surprisingly, griddling does not improve this sandwich, and it is only semi-portable. You may prepare it, sans the toasting, up to the Mae Ploy, which you can bring along in the bottle and add on-site, right before tucking into your hearty yet healthful lunch. At my former workplace, I kept a bottle of Mae Ploy in the break room fridge expressly for this purpose. (Mae Ploy tastes better at room temperature, but it’s runnier that way. I had to make a concession.)

The Sandwich has saved my hungry ass on many occasions. It’s all-season, vegan, and speedy to prepare. I imagine I have a few hundred of them yet to consume in my life, which means I have a lot to look forward to.

What lifesaving sandwiches do you look forward to all of the time, every time?

This originally appeared on Food Riot, where I contribute regularly.

When Julia Gives Advice, Take It

We all have our “if only”s.

If only I hadn’t used the word ‘ass’ during that job interview with the editor at the giant publishing house.

If only I remembered to wear a padded bra when I was on that jenky HGTV show so my nipples didn’t stick out on camera.

If only during my culinary school instructor audition I didn’t mention the time I gave myself food poisoning.

Just when you think you’ve put an “if only” to bed, it leaps up to menace you. So you can’t put it back to bed. You have to cut its head off.

Fourteen years ago, Julia Child gave me the best career advice on earth. And I was too concerned about the poison oak above my upper lip to listen.

The poison oak was a big, gross deal. It seeped and crusted and itched and was impossible not to pick at. If only I hadn’t gone off the running trail to pick blackberries. If only I hadn’t stood in a cluster of poison oak as I ate blackberries. If only I hadn’t wiped the sweat off my upper lip with the back of my poison oak-tainted hand. The breakout was in full force when I flew down to San Diego to cook for my aunt’s 50th birthday blowout.

Freshly delivered from cooking school in New York, I churned with a powerful yet unfocused ambition to make it as a writer. My wonderful aunt, always one of my biggest cheerleaders, took me to a Julia Child event at a bookstore. Julia was promoting Jacques and Julia Cooking at Home, and we gleefully clutched our brand-new copies as we waited in the snaking line of admirers.

My intention was to have Julia sign my book. And then to get the heck out her way. I wanted to express my adoration of her by not being a nuisance. But as my turn with America’s greatest culinary icon came, my aunt burst forth. “Sara’s just graduated from the CIA and she wants to be a food writer!” she gushed. I blushed, rendering the skin under my festering rash a blotchy ruby shade. I felt like a giant neon sign flashing “DISEASE!” buzzed right above my mouth.

Julia didn’t miss a beat. “Wonderful, wonderful,” she said, utterly indifferent to my gruesome facial blisters. “Here’s what you’ve got to do. Join the IACP, the International Association of Culinary Professionals.” Then, to the bookstore staff: “Does anyone have a piece of paper I can write on?” Multiple store employees scrambled and quickly obliged. Julia wrote “IACP” on the paper and handed it to me. “It’s very important to connect with your professional community. And keep on writing. Don’t give up! Just do it, do it, do it!”

Back in my new home of Sonoma, I glued the paper in my journal. I didn’t give up writing, but I didn’t join IACP. I figured I’d get around to it once I was real. Once I had more articles in pretty magazines. Once I had my name under a well-respected masthead.

Just this past fall, I did join. It took me thirteen years, during which I had my name under several mastheads and a handful of articles in pretty magazines. My writing won a few awards, and my skills as a chef deepened (even though I really did give myself food poisoning once–I know, I know). Yet all that time, I didn’t let myself think I was good enough to run with the big dogs.

The poison oak appeared on my upper lip, but the real affliction was inside me, a pox upon my confidence. I just got back from the 2014 IACP conference, and everyone there saw me as the dynamite writer and chef I know I am, because I finally told the poison oak to fuck off.

When a successful, caring person is generous enough to give you advice, don’t just savor it. Act on it. Otherwise, it’s only an “if only”.

This post originally appeared on Food Riot, where I contribute.

Bigger Fish to Fry

“Fish fry” was not on the list when we moved to Ohio. This list, often amended, had two columns: PORTLAND and MARIETTA.

PORTLAND:

• Mt. Tabor
• Quince trees
• Excellent drinking water
• Winco
• Family
• Friends
• Big, dirty river

MARIETTA:

• Aldi
• Cheaper rent
• Even cheaper water bills
• best homegrown tomatoes ever
• Ramps
• Family
• Friends
• Big, dirty river

I grew up here, in Marietta, but I never went to a fish fry until moving back over a year ago. Catholic churches have them as fundraisers on Friday nights during Lent. My parents had been raving about the St. Mary’s fish fry for ages.

The key to an optimal fish fry experience is acid. Bring half a mangled Meyer lemon and a nearly empty jar of herbed mustard from home. Squeeze the lemon all over the fish, stir a generous dab of mustard into the plastic cup of tartar sauce. Eschew the roll and the baked potato. Focus on the fish, the exterior of which is crispy and salty and greasy but not oily. The flaky flesh encased in the light batter steams when you bite into it. The church volunteers tell you it’s pollock. The baked fish option is not pollock, but one does not attend an all-you-can-eat fish fry for the baked fish.

There’s a table with desserts, crumbly and dry sugar cookies from the grocery store topped with brightly colored globs of icing. Do not go to this table. For dessert, eat more fried fish. Your husband may suggest to sneak in a beer, but that’s making it too complicated. Drink the beer at home, later, for your Hobbit-like second dessert. At $8.50 per adult, the fish fry is not only a steal. It is the best dinner in town that does not generate from my kitchen.

The PORTLAND/MARIETTA list plagues me. Portland—that Portland, the one in Oregon with its own quirky sketch comedy show—thrums with vitality and creativity. It’s a slam-dunk food town, with its zillion food carts and photogenic farmer’s markets and hidden pockets of ethnic restaurants. We lived there in a succession of little rental houses, where I tended gimpy garden plots and cranked out frugal dinners on electric stoves. I had an engaging job with an acclaimed public library system and a free transit pass.

But. There was the rain, so much of it, over and over again. There was mud, and unpaved streets with no sidewalks, and warped windows in our various bedrooms that the heat seeped through. Nine months of the year I was chilled to the bones, no matter how many sweaters I wore or how much hot tea I drank.

I wanted to love Portland, and I did. I wanted to love being there, and I couldn’t. Years passed; my mood darkened. Portlanders adore their city, and for a fellow Portlander not to feel the same way doesn’t compute to them. I felt isolated on our sodden, potholed street far off from the trendier neighborhoods where our friends lived.

We moved to Ohio just when things were looking up: I was in line for a promotion, my husband was finally getting calls from his oft-circulated resume. But I insisted.

It’s a small town, Marietta, in one of the whitest regions in America. Instead of the meth teeth I spotted on many Portland library patrons, I see Mountain Dew teeth. Our rental has, once again, an electric stove, but the house’s insulation is excellent, and we keep it toasty warm without sky-high utility bills.

The St. Mary’s fish fry is just blocks from this house. In Portland, we never would have pulled our little daughter in a wagon to the Catholic church fish fry on a Friday night. We never would have been excited to see a bulb of fennel at the grocery store (clumsily labeled “anise”). Our heartbeats would not have quickened at hearing a language other than English.

It’s unreasonable to compare the two cities, the two places, the two lives. And yet. I do, compulsively, measuring out our gains against our losses. The happiest glimpses of our time in Portland were when I was incredibly in the moment, soaking up goodness without overanalyzing it. Picking raspberries with Frances, walking to the playground across the street from our shitty house, drinking beer on a patio in the sun. Same goes for here. Same goes for anywhere, really. You find the joy you find, even if it’s not the joy you’d pick out for yourself. Even if “fish fry” is not on your list.

The St. Mary’s All-You-Can-Eat Fish Fry runs through April 11. BYO Meyer lemons and herbed mustard.

This article originally appeared on Food Riot, where I contribute regularly.