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16 January 2007
Sammiches: diagonal cut or perpendicular bisect?→[More:]
And why? Use the other side of the paper if necessary.
If the sandwich will be on a plate, diagonal, it's pretty. I often don't cut corner to corner, but slightly askew. It's more imaginative and special looking.
If it's in a lunchbox, perpendicular cut. Sometimes I use the dreaded plastic sandwich baggie, and it's easier for my children to retrieve if it's perp.
It depends on the sandwich.
For something with stable innards such as a grilled cheese or that will have fun corners to bite off: diagonal
For company, sometimes quarters.
Mostly, i don't bother.
Yeah, me neither. Especially for something like PB&J where you have to eat around the edge of the sandwich, getting all the crusts off, until you are left with all the delicious peanut butteriness to eat. mmmmmm.
It's funny, they do seem to get eated all up faster when cut diagonally. I hadn't realized that. I think that the shape is just conducive to rapid munching; more acute angles.
Of course if the bread is really rounded on top and you're splitting a sandwich with someone, it's fairer to do the perpendicularity.
If it's for me, straight up. If I'm preparing it for someone else (aka the kids) and therefore care some about presentation, diagonal.
I prefer cut to whole, on the whole, because it's easier to hold. (You don't dirty a clean knife, you use the same knife you used to spread the mustard. What? No mustard, you say? You're dead to me. (Yes, even on PB&J (No, not really.)))
It's perfectly reasonable to split your sandwich with someone if they're splitting their sandwich with you. And they're different sandwiches, like one has strawberry jam and one has apricot jam.
Cutting sandwiches is just wrong. It's luncheon mutilation. Uncut sandwiches are happier, less likely to carry disease and much more likely to please their consumers. I hope this settles it.
I never cut them, as usually I've got sooo much stuff in them. ie. egg sammidge = eggs, mayo (my own mayo, not storebought), cucumber, tomato (both cut thickly), celery, and lettuce and/or bean sprouts. Oh, and dried basil and pepper and maybe salt. See, it gets so big that the integrity of 1/2 a sammidge isn't really enough to hold it all together, especially if it has to travel (say, to work).
As for pbj's and the like, nah. It's all going to be a chewed mush in about 3 min anyways, so why bother?
I made a great one for lunch today. I took two very thin corn tostado shells and put a vegan burger in between, plus some soy dressing, ketchup, a slice of avocado, and some lettuce. It was SO good.
I couldn't cut it tho. It was way too brittle and crunchy. Plus it was round. So the normal rules of sammich slicing do not apply.
I'm not saying that, gaspode, but studies have shown that a higher percentage of men with cut hoagies in all 3 ethnic groups tend to compensate with other sandwich wraps. If they were getting all the flavor they needed, they wouldn't need to do that.
Right, because if you use truffle mayonaise on your sandwich, you're a pansy.
If you tend to reach for grainy mustard, you're manly. If you prefer butter, you're Canadian.
Why does a thread about sandwiches ALWAYS have to turn into an argument about guys' hoagies? Just once, I'd like to be able to talk about a nice tuna pita or even fish taco without people comparing them to hoagies.
I too do the LoriFLA method of cutting diagonally and slightly askew.
I meant to add to the crust or no crust post: Sometimes I cut only just the bottom crusts off.
The only reason to cut them is to make them more manageable or attractive, sometimes for the extended pleasure of others.
i don't know about you guys, but sometime a foot long or more is just not easy to handle, and maybe i don't want to deal with all that all at once, just as i've started getting into the business of really getting into a sub.
That's just me.
Until recently, i just didn't wasn't really into all that thick white stuff and was going the way of the pita, torilla, and just plain open faced girl stuff.
Now someone tell me why in the empty headed post coital state, "dear asshat" starts playing in my brain.
Discussions like these certainly give me insight into what the community-here-apart-from-me deems as relevant, and I will certainly use this as a learning experience.
The fact is that you people just aren't listening to the data that's being provided. The way that sandwiches are cut is a deeply personal choice, and it's one that should be left to every individual. If you'd just watch this video, produced by one of the greatest sandwich researchers of all time, I think you'd finally understand what I'm trying to say.
But I concede that maybe I shouldn't even be discussing it here, and from now on I will only discuss sandwiches when OTHER PEOPLE BRING THEM UP.
This is an hilarious thread, but seriously, I feel like if the sandwich is cut diagonally, there is "less" sandwich. The pointy bits on the corners are somehow wasted. I generally do not cut at all, though.