Thinking about sandwiches

I played Badminton for only the 3rd ever time in my life today, the last time being nearly 8 years ago at my school. I had so much fun, even if I did have to learn how to serve properly.

Linking that to what I want to write about here, well, I came home rather hungry and the first thing I did was reach for my remaining slices of bread and pickled gherkins. That's when I got to thinking about sandwiches: their simplicity and versatility.

Now, you can easily make them vegan-friendly by not spreading butter or margerine on the slices of bread. While not a full-time vegan myself, I frankly never do, mainly because I discovered many years ago that the marg interferes with the natural flavour of the filling. I blame this on an incident while on holiday in Germany a great many Summers ago. My mum was preparing brötchen (hardened bread rolls) for our lunch while we embarked on our 8-hour car ride from Germany back to London, and that's a rough time estimate including the time to cross the Channel, in either the tunnel or on the ferry. So for our lunch, we stopped at a minimal service station, basically a place with a petrol station, a shop, some toilets and lots of park benches. I was looking forward to my brötchen of sliced sausage and hated the overbearing taste of margerine that came with it. Yuck.

So if I do spread anything on bread slices for sandwiches these days, it's paté as an accompaniment to sliced gherkins. And maybe some sort of flavoured cream cheese with sliced salmon, but that's unlikely. Whenever I'm fortunate enough to have salmon as a sandwich filling, I just slice it up and have it between soft white bread slices.

What else do I like as a sandwich filling? Hmm, let's see. Egg mayonnaise, despite not being a mayo fan. I'll also admit that I much prefer my mother's home made egg mayo than the stuff she buys at Sainsbury's. If only she'd make it again...

While at uni, I got into the habit of buying paninis at least once a week from the union canteen. I ate either prawn mayo or cajun chicken as the filling. But there was a good reason I didn't eat too many paninis: every single one got stuffed with tons of cheese, which got melted. Not exactly healthy. (I would have personally preferred having less cheese, but oh well.)

I'm kind of glad I'm not at uni anymore, I would have failed this lent exercise instantly. Now here's something to think about: is Nutella suitable for vegans?