The Outdoor Sandwich

Last Friday Dad and I decided to go snowshoeing at the spur of the moment. The freedom to make plans like this is one of the perks of being retired - at least being retired from a real job.

As we were heading about 40-minutes south of the city to check one of my trail cameras, we would be gone for a good part of the day. So naturally we had to pack a lunch.

Of course the go-to outdoor staple is a darn good sandwich. But I had one small problem: no bread. I am  trying to trim down by twenty pounds or so, and the only way I seem to be able to do that is by cutting out carbs - and chocolate. (I did have chocolate in the house - go figure.)

So I sent Dad to the store to buy a loaf of 5-Star Light Rye. This local bread is the cornerstone of any good sandwich. You need to buy the lightest loaf you can to get moist chewy bread. Not in the sense of moist, chewy Wonder bread that never seems to dry out and mould over (that concerns me a bit), but a fresh loaf of additive-free 5-Star Light Rye is something to behold.

Dad returned advising that the 5-Star delivery wasn't for another 30-minutes, so the clerk recommended a replacement. Another brand of light rye bread - but with caraway seeds. Yuk. Caraway seeds make bread taste nasty, IMHO (in my humble opinion). I sometimes wonder if caraway seeds were introduced to bread back in the days when mice were out of control. (I'll let you figure that one out on your own. Then you'll laugh your butt off.)

In any event, there was no time to pluck the dang caraway seeds from each slice with tweezers so I decided I'd make an ass-kicker of a sandwich out of moose-loaf (moose MEAT that is...). It would be so good you'd never notice that caraway taste - at least in theory.

So I built a sandwich from the ground up (you might say "ground-moose-up" in this case) by buttering the bread, covering one slice of buttery bread with Grey Poupon and the other slice with medium cheddar. The meat loaf was cut into half-inch slices and drizzled with Diana steak sauce, salt and pepper - then carefully closed together like a precious book.

As an aside, I won't let my Dad make a sandwich. He's a man of many talents. He can play the guitar and was in a band when he was in the airforce. He can fly a plane, fix a television, and complete a complex income-tax return. By trade he is an electronic technician; common house wiring is child's play for him. If he wants, he can talk electronics and it sounds like a totally different language. You might as well watch his lips move and imagine he is talking Swahili - because that's what it sounds like to the layman. But build a sandwich? No way. Dad used to be able to make beans and wieners - and I think he can boil water - but I don't know about now. Mom does the cooking and Dad does the eating. He's a man who knows what he likes. Mom always has date-oat square on hand, as it is his favourite. Sometimes he eats it with ice-cream. He's also a fool for apple pie. But he doesn't get near the construction area in a kitchen.

Back to the sandwich building. Let's break down the process. First, let's consider the buttering. Don't butter your sandwich? You fool. Butter makes things better. It's not just a slick advertising slogan. Ask a 5-star chef about butter. Also ask if they ever substitute margarine. Not! Butter is natural. It is something that humans can digest properly. Margarine and its derivatives can grease the wheels on a skidder in all four seasons. Ever wonder why margarine doesn't get rock-hard in the cold and settle into a puddle in the heat? Because it's NOT FOOD that's why!

Some people buy margarine that has been flavoured and coloured to resemble butter. Hello! Try this: Take a moose turd, inject it with almond extract, dip it in chocolate and then eat it. My guess is that you'll gag like you've just eaten a freshly hatched maggot. I assure you it does not become a chocolate-coated almond because it looks like one!

Butter also prevents other condiments from oozing into the bread. This is critical. Ketchup, for example, will slowly eek its way into your bread and make it look like a used band-aid.

Butter also adds natural fat to the "sang-wich". Something you need in the outdoors. My father-in-law worked as a section foreman on the railway driving a heat-less, track-motor-car down the rails in 40-below weather. He ate pork fat in the fall and winter and swore by it. Sausages, chops, provolone - you name it. Fat keeps you warm. That's why I carry an inch or so over top of my "six-pack" (or shall I say 12-pack).

Then there is the meat. Few sandwiches are sandwiches without meat (PB&J being one of the exceptions). Sorry vegans, man was made to eat meat. If not, God would have given our bare-foot, neanderthal ancestors gardening gloves, not spears - and Ruger Mini-14s.

And we're not talking a single slice of shaved ham. No, an outdoor sandwich needs serious meat. Meat needs to be the primary ingredient. It's not like a chicken ceasar salad, where you have to search through the tall grass for the chicken (that's why I call them "chicken-hunt salads"). The meat needs to dominate! Make a "sangy" with a half-inch or more of meat (1 cm for you young pups) and it transforms from a sandwich to a "man-wich". (To reflect gender-equality, I could have included the term "woman-wich" but then I'd be a little worried about suggestive subliminal messages coming back to bite me.)

You'll notice there is no lettuce in the outdoor sandwich. This is on purpose. First off, salad wilts and oozes green over time. As I learned in high school science class that green ooze is called "chloroform" - or something like that. Furthermore, there is lots of salad in the bush. Does Survivor Man bring salad into the woods with him? Not! He brings a couple of cashews. That's because cashews don't grow in our woods. Salad does. You can pick all kinds of green leaves in spring, summer and fall - and in winter you can do like the deer and eat some cedar bows, if you really have to have salad with your sandwich.

"No tomatoes?" You ask. Remember this sangy is going to be placed in an air tight zip-lock bag and stuffed into your pack sack. When you go to find it you'll be squirrelling around with your hand in the bag and by time you retrieve your manwich it will be verily mashed. If you have tomato slices in your sangy, it will look more like sauce than sandwich when you go to eat it.

Remember boys and girls, Martha Stewart doesn't do shows on outdoor sandwiches (or prison sandwiches). You are talking with an expert!

When I was the commander of the SWAT team they didn't call me Sgt. Sandwich for nothing.