An Old, Dried-Up Sandwich.

[title type="h6"]Monday, September 30, 2013.[/title] To keep me from starving while she is away for two weeks, Mary Ann has loaded up on Chisesi ham and deli turkey. She figures--rightly--that if the prospect of going to the same old North Shore places gets me down, I can eat a sandwich. A half-sandwich, actually, using one slice of bread but the same amount of deli meat I'd use for a normal two-slice sandwich. MA says that my self-control in accepting something like that as a full meal is amazing. I'll take any compliment I can get. I don't make many sandwiches at home, really. They always make me recall something my mother said that was so pathetic it almost brings me to tears to think about it. She used to read every word I wrote when I first started writing about restaurants. (How she got copies of the LSUNO Driftwood is a mystery to me still.) At first, I shuddered to think about what she thought about my work, since she knew better than anyone my vast lack of knowledge about the fine points of cooking. Then, on one of my rare visits to her, she uttered the words that continue to ring in the echoing halls of my guilt. "I read about all this gourmet food you eat," she said. "And there I am, sitting at my desk at the hospital, chewing on an old dried-up sandwich!" The word "chewing" carried most of the power. I laughed when she said that, shining the wisdom of a barely-adult onto her poor superannuated soul. "Well, why don't you fix yourself a tender, fresh, moist sandwich instead?" I asked. "Or cook something?" My mother worked full-time at Ochsner, which wasn't far from where we lived. We weren't poor. And she was such a fine cook that she could have prepared anything to bring to work. Of course, if she did that, she would have no rockets to fire across my bow. But every time I think about that now. . . it makes me feel as if, once in awhile, I should eat a dried-up old sandwich as some kind of penance.