Lusts of the Flesh #3

You'd be forgiven for assuming this post is about crumpets. It's not. Instead, I present: The Cheese Sandwich.

A simple snack. Sourdough bread jetted in from San Francisco's famous Boudin Bakery. Pale Normandy butter, glittering with crystals of sea salt. Farmhouse Cheddar Cheese from Somerset, smooth and firm, with long, rich nutty flavours and a sharp almost sour tang at the end.

Slice bread, spread with butter, add slices of cheese - pickle optional - eat, enjoy.

No, no, no, no, NO!

My dream sandwich is made of the cheapest white bread - spongy, almost flaccid but curling slightly at the edges - spread with bright yellow value margarine (Stork in massive catering tubs is perfect), with a pile of grated orange cheese (of no identifiable provenance but definitely not a Kraft Single) and a thick ring of raw onion.

The sandwich must be wrapped in clingfilm and left unrefrigerated for several hours on a shelf just below a display of dry roasted peanuts, next to a jar of pickled eggs which would defy carbon-dating. The cheese will sweat, the margarine gain a subtle rancid quality and the onion will become ever more acrid in flavour. The bread will somehow manage to become both dry and soggy. Ohhh...

I have attempted to psychoanalyse this particular Lust of the Flesh. Hangover food? Afternoons spent in smoky boozers after long and tiring mornings in bed? A giddy stumble to the pub? It wasn't the food, mate, it was the company...

But if this were so, I'd eat burned crumpets dripping in (again) cheap margarine, whilst The Archers Omnibus burbles in the background, and I reminisce happily about feeling utterly, utterly spent.

My perfect cheese sandwich is simply a slutty snack; a true lust of the flesh.