Patrolling the Border lets you mix whatever slippery fillings you want and always get them before they fall! It takes a bit of practice and speed, but it’s got a good learning curve. Let’s review what happens to our fillings when we dine on ‘wichs:

It’s depressing even to think about. Look at all those fillings just getting away, running for the plate. I’m tearing up, I can’t take it, let’s move on.

It’s the horizontal part of our bite force that pushes the fillings out! This will happen as long as our teeth aren’t perfectly straight and we can’t break the sandwich perfectly. Maybe we should sharpen our teeth so we can bite only vertically? Put your files away there’s an easier solution…

Instead of fighting the slide as the CounterForce Technique dictates, this solution gives into the slide only to catch them on the other end. You bite around the sandwich, catching and reversing the flow of fillings, slowly building a star out of your sandwich. Lots of us do this without thinking about it, when pure animal instinct kicks in, “Hey gravity, I see you taking my fillings! Give them back you greedy bastard! KAPOW! Take THAT!” This technique practically guarantees that you won’t miss any fillings. The challenge is that as you bite around the ‘wich, the fillings become more exposed and your hand-holds less abundant. It also makes you look a little silly (to people who don’t value sandwiches enough) while you tilt your head to catch the runaways. Have no shame about patrolling the border, it’s a perfectly acceptable way to maximize your sandwich — the real shame is having to clean up your plate afterward!

Anyone patrol on a regular basis? How does it treat you and your sandwiches?

*(To keep avocado in your sandwich, cut it up into small chunks with lots of edges or make guacamole and spread it thinly. Avoid slices at all costs!)

This is the first version of an attempt to better understand sandwiches. All good analysis is easily summarized into a 2×2 plot that somehow includes everything. For sandwiches this manifests as the “‘Wich Plot©” and shows all sandwiches in the context of “Strategy” and “Execution”.

The plot:

Execution is a scale of how well the sandwich is made, in reality. This is the simpler axis as it’s directly observable by eating the sandwich! Some factors that influence the execution axis:

• How well is the sandwich made? Does it fall apart when you eat it?
• What is the quality of the ingredients? (Is the bread hard and nasty? Are the meats unnatural square shapes?)
• How appetizing does the sandwich look?
• How much love went into building the sandwich?

Strategy is a rating of the sandwich recipe complexity. It’s the rating of the sandwich in theory. Kind of like how each performance in the Olympics gets a difficulty rating. Some factors that influence sandwich strategy ranking include:

• Are there lots of ingredients?
• Does each ingredient require special preparation (roasting, skinning, cooking, etc.)?
• Does the sandwich require a very delicate or specific construction process to be properly made (like a croque monsieur)?

Here’s some samples of how common sandwiches fall on the strategy axis:

By combining the two axis we can start to get a feel for what it means when a sandwich falls in each of the four quadrants. In counter-clockwise from the bottom left:

• Poor execution of low strategy sandwiches: You must be hungry; you are making the simplest of sandwiches without regard to quality or love for sandwiches. Skip these sandwiches, and go have some pasta. Seriously, don’t bother.
• Good execution of low strategy sandwiches: Now we’re talking! You’re practicing the basic sandwiches because you love them. The sandwiches are simple, but delicious and don’t deserve any harassment for their imbalance.
• Good execution of high strategy sandwiches: Now we’re REALLY talking! These are the special sandwiches that allow the whole category to rival the rest of the food world. In extremes, these are the tiny open faced sandwiches that you can find at some of the best restaurants in the world.
• Poor execution of high strategy sandwiches: This is just silly. Why bother making a complicated sandwich if you aren’t going to put any love into it? Some kind of a sick ingredient fetish? More processed meats and cheeses do not a better sandwich make!

Recap:

Let’s plot some sandwiches! I put 5 on the chart, though you can ask yourself “Where would the last sandwich I had fall?” The actual plotting is rather fuzzy since this is not math and there are no numbers.

To really get value out of this analysis, we have to draw some conclusions about certain groups of sandwiches and get some information that might help us in reality. I tried to aggregate some common groups of sandwiches and highlighted them on the chart below with colored circles. You can see that the chain sandwich shops generally, use poor quality ingredients (I hate that shredded lettuce!) and that if you have a few fancy ingredients leftover from dinner, you can whip up a tasty sandwich (though they are usually fairly simple). Specialty sandwich shops are where the love is: decent construction with decent strategy! Now when someone asks why you don’t like Subway or Quizno’s you can say “Oh, yuck, you eat low execution sandwiches?” That is love.

I submit to you, precious readers, the first piece of the boring-sandwich conspiracy: a guide [461k pdf] on how to pair sandwiches with deli meats from the US Dairy Export Council (USDEC). Sounds ominous to me! Naturally,they have an agenda to promote sandwiches as a vehicle for cheese consumption. Oddly enough they focused only on meat and cheese combinations and don’t include the most obvious cheesy sandwich of all: Grilled cheese (Tested in the SANDWICHLab here).

What’s your vote: are deli owners just uncreative or are they being manipulated by the multi-million dollar cheese lobby?

I’ve identified 4 stages of the sandwich lifecycle:

• Identification: Wherein the need for a sandwich is identified, usually via hunger, but occasionally out of pure hedonism. This stage usually goes by very quickly (often while reading a menu) and doesn’t get much attention.
• Procurement: Wherein the tasty morsel is obtained, either through outright purchasing or by ingredient shopping and construction. This is the creative phase of the sandwich lifecycle: you can make any sandwich you want! The time taken in this stage will payback in spades in the next phase, so don’t rush it. Why settle for a peanut butter on bread when you could really indulge with some grilled sirloin and onions on a roll?
• Consumption: Wherein the sandwich is consumed! Horray! This phase of the lifecycle naturally gets all the attention; This is where all the sandwichy aspirations are realized, the goods are delivered and belief in a just and sandwichy god is re-affirmed. This is the stage that everyone wishes would last forever, but is usually pretty short.
• Celebration / Nostalgia: Wherein the sandwich is at once celebrated and missed. The sandwich is gone, all that remains is the fleeting memory of greatness (and potentially food-coma). This stage usually lasts the longest and is what brings the eater back to worship at the temple of sandwich.

Nicely done Mr. Neuendorf, you’ve done a great service on behalf of sandwiches and psychologists everywhere! The sandwiches chosen are exemplary, with the exception of the Muffuletta (a massive multi-person, whole-bread consuming beast of a sandwich). While it certainly meets sandwichy needs, the final stage should be more focused on self-actualization (the 5th stage of the Maslow hierarchy). The submitter rightfully suggests the fifth stage sandwich be the “creation of a personal favorite sandwich.” Doesn’t that sound more like someone summing all their resources into creativity and production?

Some thoughts on it:

• Honey doesn’t go bad. Ever. Wikipedia says it’s good “for decades, and even centuries.”
• What is ‘French’? People? They certainly last longer. Dressing? I wouldn’t eat 2 month old French dressing!
• Why is Lox on this chart? What kind of luxuriously pampered sultan just adds a dash of smoked salmon to dishes whenever he feels? Maybe the sultan of sandwiches? (My jealousy of this fictional person is overwhelming.)

Table of Condiments (That Periodically Go Bad)

Shock #1: Movie stars eat at Subway. Shock #2: He likes subway because it creates a ‘pocket’ to protect him against filling creep. Readers, do not attempt to create these ‘pockets’, they are very dangerous and may explode, sending your sacred fillings everywhere and ruining everything! Michael, give CounterForce a try! It works on good sandwiches, so you don’t have to keep going to Subway.

And when is Arrested Development coming back?

This year, I resolve to eat more sandwiches. I resolve to celebrate more sandwiches. I resolve to have a year so chock full o’ sandwiches that some higher power has to CounterForce it in place to keep all the sandwiches from spilling out onto the meta-physical plate.

I’m so excited by the sandwich-y prospects of a new year that I invite everyone to join me. But, don’t just put it on the end of your list, make it your list. What else could be this important?

Look at this horrible slide into failure. The sandwich starts out perfect and with each bite ejects the filling out the back. Argh, it hurts even to think about!

The filling slides out because the bread (or wrapping) bends and at the bend, pushes the filling outward in both directions: into your mouth where it belongs and toward the plate, where it don’t. This is often noticed when people hold the sandwich only on the edges, making a little pocket of filling just going full throttle on the runway to the plate.

There is a solution! Don’t despair, CounterForce will save you (and your sandwiches)! The answer lies in a revolutionary new technique called CounterForce: using your fingers to counter the motion of the filling by pressing down just in front of the impact zone. This keeps the filling in place and prevents the loss of delicious sandwich parts. The only twist is that this requires enough friction between the bread and filling, and within the filling if there are multiple layers. Spreads, slippery lunch meats and leaves are all prime culprits for defeating the counterforce technique.

The lesson to be learned from these poorly constructed sandwiches is that the layering order of fillings is extremely important, and if overlooked can completely ruin the sandwich experience. Some things to keep in mind when layering and eating your sandwiches:

• Select ingredients carefully! Sure a sandwich with avocado, butter and yogurt sounds good, but it’s sure to shoot the avocado’s out the back with the lack of friction. Throw some sprouts around the avocado and you’ve got a perfectly edible sandwich, with a little crunchy texture to write home about!
• Leaves: Keep the lumpy main vein in peices of lettuce, it provides great friction to a major culprit of filling slip
• Spreads: If you must apply mountains of slippery spreads (mayo, I’m talkin’ to you!), put something with lots of grip (bacon, you delicious morsel) touching it to counter the sliding.
• Don’t be shy about CounterForcing: CounterForce in a line across the sandwich to really stop the fillings.
• Don’t CounterForce only on the sides: the fillings are likely to be missed entirely and make a big torpedo waiting to be launched. Instead, counterforce in the middle of the sandwich, directly on top of the fillings.
• Use the whole surface area of your thumbs: you will get a much better grip on the bottom of the sandwich and no one will notice.
• Toasting/Pannini-ing: Toasting the sandwich often lets the ingredients get to know eachother and meld. A prime example are paninis, they almost never leak!

It starts with regular sandwiches in the middle. To the left we see what happens when sides are connected and to the right the wrapping is removed entirely. While I enjoy the whole spectrum, it’s the “sandwiches” that get my love.