Like yesterday, my plans for today's post based on the #HiveBloPoMo calendar I put together started off with a different idea. You see, I immediately thought of a sandwich story that I posted on my WordPress blog years ago that would be perfect to redo for today. Then last night I searched through my old WP posts, and couldn't find it.
Then I searched my old blockchain posts... yep, I'd done it as an "exclusively on" for our legacy chain back on February 8th, 2018.
So while I'm still going to share it below, I'm also adding a bit from a draft post I did find on my WP blog, to make this post a sort of, "something old and something new" thing!
A Tale of Two Sandwiches
To begin with...
Peanut Butter and Jelly - aka, the "Traci Sandwich"
Back in April 2018, I apparently outlined a recipe post called, "Cooking challenge - sandwiches." Seems my "brilliant" idea was to write a post with "recipes" for sandwiches (no wonder it's still gathering dust...😂).
However, I realized that the sandwich of focus was for what my late father called "Traci Sandwiches" with some extra variations, and given my post from yesterday, I figured maybe my dad wanted me to finally make use of it.
My dad, at his core, was a man with very simple needs. He needed to take care of his family. To do that, he ran a 24 hour alarm monitoring business out of our house, which he personally oversaw about 25 hours per day.
Doing that didn't leave much time for things like eating and sleeping, so his normal routine was to grab quick snacks/naps throughout the day. One of his favorite quick eats was what he called the "Traci" sandwich, because I was usually the one to make it for him, and he swore that I had a way of doing it that made it taste better than anyone else could.
The recipe is simple - Jiff peanut butter, Smuckers grape jelly, and 2 slices of Wonder bread. Spread PB on one slice of bread, jelly on the other, put together and slice diagonally.
The recipe "variations" I'd jotted down included strawberry jelly, banana, and Nutella (if you were feeling truly adventurous). 😁
So while this isn't exactly how I planned talking about it (according to my notes, I wanted to make all the sandwich varieties and treat it much like a regular, if comedic, recipe post), I'm glad to have the excuse to share this memory. In fact the sandwich became such a touchstone for my dad, that in our last conversations in the nursing home before the aphasia (loss of verbal communication) kicked in, he'd still ask for one whenever he was hungry.
To this day, almost twenty years after losing him, I still can't make a pb&j without thinking about him.
And now for the...
The Chicken Salad Sandwich Story
The backstory to this (which I actually didn't include in my initial telling) is that when I was in college about a million years ago (majoring in Psychology, with thoughts of becoming a therapist), I spent a couple of semesters working for the student hotline. There were four or five of us who became friends and hung out a lot together. One night Marta told us about her boring friend who always rambling with what they called, "chicken salad sandwich" stories. It totally cracked us up & we ended up referring to it all the time.
I happened to mention it to my parents over xmas break and yeah... not my smartest idea! My mom and my (now late) aunt in particular never let me forget about it. Whenever I'm talking to my mom these days, she'll still interrupt me to ask, "this isn't another chicken salad sandwich story, is it?"
Now here's the same story from my old post, told in fable form (in which pb&j has a guest staring role)...
...at a university not so far away, a young girl named Traci...no, that doesn't sound right for a fairy tale... okay, the Unique Disney Princess Name Generator came up with Princess Isabella Moonbeam was studying hard to become a member of the Royal Guidance Guild.
To further her knowledge, she also volunteered at the student support hotline, staffed with a small group of others wishing to join the Guidance Guild. In short order, the group became fast friends, and oftentimes would hang out together after hours at the campus pub.
One such evening, the conversation turned thusly...
Princess Alexandra finished her tale and took a sip of beer
Prince Cary: "Dilly dilly, Alex! I didn't think that story would ever end!"
Princess Marta: "At least her story had a point. I have a friend back home named Petunia, who could be in the Royal Guinness Book of Records with the length of her pointless stories."
Princess Isabella: "Oh, really? Do tell!"
Princess Marta: "Well, there was this one time we were having lunch in the school cafeteria, when the subject of sandwiches came about. Petunia began telling us about how she and her younger brother always brought their lunch to school in brown paper bags."
Princess Alexandra: "Okay, that sounds boring, but it couldn't have been that long a story."
Princess Marta: "You'd think, right? Well, she went on in great detail about these sandwiches. Hers always had to be a chicken salad sandwich with the crusts on. Her brother insisted on having peanut butter and jelly with the crusts cut off."
Princess Isabella: "Oooh, I sense a sandwich switch coming up."
Prince Cary: "No, I think it will end up being a crust catastrophe."
Princess Marta: "That's what we were thinking! But after about a thousand hours of her describing every single aspect of their school lunches, we interrupted to her ask what the point of the story was. Did a switch happen, or did the crusts end up off when they should've been on? Did the school suddenly forbid bag lunches? Was there a bully in the cafeteria who was somehow thwarted through the power of the chicken salad sandwich? Did one of the paper bags catch on fire?"
Princess Alexandra: "Yes, and...."
Princess Marta: "....and nothing. She stared at us for a moment, thought very carefully, and said the point was that she always wanted chicken salad, and her brother always wanted PB &J."
However, the tale does not end there. You see, Princess Isabella made the mistake of telling the King and Queen about Pointless Petunia, to which they exclaimed, "YES! EXACTLY! Those are the kind of stories you tell us all the time, Isabella!"
From that day forth, throughout all the kingdom, whenever Isabella began to tell a tale, someone in the crowd would exclaim, "This isn't another one of those chicken salad sandwich stories now, is it?"
DISCLAIMER
I personally, for a myriad of reasons, despise Bud Light, but I absolutely adored the "dilly dilly" ad campaign (that is, until they literally went Game of Thrones & ruined it for me). My use of "dilly dilly" should not be construed as an endorsement for the brand, for my heart now and forever belongs to Guinness. Oh, and...
Blog thumbnail created on Canva with sandwich pictures (peanut butter & jelly and chicken salad) from Wikimedia Commons.
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