Say you’re eating a sandwich, and it’s not cut in half. How do you eat it?
Me, I start at one corner and eat it in sweeps along the opposite diagonal, so that I finish in the opposite corner. (I start at the bottom right corner, and I end in the upper left corner.)
My sidekick at work, however, starts in one corner but then goes around and around in counter-clockwise circles. After watching this in amazement for months, I finally asked him, and his explanation was that that way you get all the less-than-full areas out of the way first, and the whole second (inner) half of the sandwich will have all of the ingredients in each bite.
I then proceeded to think about this some more (yeah, I need a life – we all need lives, gang) – and the reason my system is right (sic) is that it’s neater – you always have an “edged” piece (with crust) available to hold, so you are less likely to get any oogy fillings on your hand.
Now that I’ve figured this out, I can enlighten him, and no doubt change his life forever.
I usually start at one corner, and first work my way across the edge, around the corner, and up the next edge. Then I begin on the center of the sandwich, until have eaten most, but not all, of the “non-crust” part. I then start on one end of the remaining L-shaped bit (it doesn’t matter which end), and work across until it’s gone.
It does depend somewhat on what type of sandwich it is; sometimes I like to end with a “center piece” instead of a “crust piece”. Tuna and grilled cheese come to mind.
Start at a corner, move clockwise to a flat side, and eat from flat-to-flat. The method you espouse leaves you with a long, uncrusted, drippy central hypotenuse for a large proportion of your sandwich consumption.
I start at one corner with the upper crust, then eat the rest of the upper crust with 1/4 - 1/3 of the sandwich. After that, no particular plan except eat the most protruding portion of the remainder and end with a corner of the lower crust.
Oh, square Wonderbread-type sammich?
Middle-bottom, bottom right, bottom left, left middle, right middle, top right, top middle, middle (best part), glare in anger at remaining top left since it represents the destination and not the voyage.
I like sandwiches, but not plain bread. So I will cut or take off with my fingers the crust and/or edges of the sandwich first, so that I only have bites with combinations of bread and whatever else, never bread alone.
I begin in the upper right corner, eat the top crust toward the left, return to the starting corner, and eat the remaining crusts in clockwise direction. When the crusts are gone, I eat the middle bit corner by corner until it’s gone.
I solve the drip issues by spreading the filling thin. Yes, I am aware that most other people think my sandwiches are disgusting because the ratio of bread to filling is 5 or 6:1. They are essentially flavored bread, and I like 'em that way.
Start at a corner, then alternate working down the sides, with the random chomp out of the middle until I reach the opposite corner. Exceptions made and bites taken out of other corners if ingredients start to escape.
And when you are about 4 bites from finishing, start planning to avoid the burger dilemma where you end up with a last piece in your hand that is too small to bite without making a royal mess but too large to just pop in.
Eat a corner. Eat another corner along the same edge, leaving the middle part of that edge sticking out. Eat that. Repeat on the next row (not the edge row, the middle row). When I’m down to the last row, turn sandwich sideways and eat corner to end. This is a little tough to describe. Envision the sandwich row entering your mouth with bread on the left, then filling, then the other slice of bread, i.e., not with the bread on the top, then filling, then bread again. Hope this clears things up.
This is indeed the only true way (and also the way I eat a whole pizza if I can’t be bothered to cut it into slices, which caused a housemate of mine to stare in amazement). If the sandwich is too dry, an occasional bite out of the middle while eating the crust will alleviate this.
First I cut off and discard the crusts on three sides, leaving only the top crust. I bite off the bottom two corners first, then the top two corners. Then I eat around the edges evenly until the last bite is the very center of the sandwich.
Start at the top, bite, chew, swallow, repeat. As I’m doing this, I try to: (1) keep the sandwich as bilaterally symmetrical as possible; (2) keep the sandwich insides between the bread; and (3) have some bread and inside ingredient in every bite. Method of chomping on the sandwich will vary according to the type of sandwich, e.g., regular bread sandwiches, subs, rolls, etc.
I start at a corner, then circle around, eating the crust first. This is because I don’t particularly like the crust on most sandwich bread, and want to get it out of the way before I start enjoying my sandwich.
Once the crust is disposed of, I hold it by two corners over a plate (in case it does drip) and start eating at a third corner. If it threatens to get drippy, I rotate it 180 degrees and start on the other corner where the drippy stuff has accumulated. I repeat this until the sandwich is gone.
