Question from an ignorant American: what is a cheese toasty?
I don’t see much point in cutting a sandwich in half if you intend to eat both halves anyway. That’s something you do for kids or adults who eat like birds. (OK - or at a restaurant where they serve up ridiculously big and calorie-laden monstrosities)
In the case that a sandwich has to be cut, diagonally all the way.
Heh…well, it doesn’t follow with Teacake’s wording, but Urban Dictionary says:
I usually cut sandwiches diagonally. Grilled cheese sandwiches get cut into quarters, diagonally, because that’s the way my mother used to do it. If it’s rye bread, or some other bread that’s more rectangular than square, it has to be cut as Harmonious Discord describes, as a compromise between diagonal and horizontal.
That’s exactly the reason I cut it vertically – if each half-sandwich has some good crust and some less-good crust, I won’t eat all of the best bit first.
By the way, growing up my mother cut sandwiches horizontally and sandwiches in restaurants were cut diagonally. I thought I invented cutting sandwiches vertically!
To use the terminology of the poll, I cut mine somewhere in between vertical and diagonal. It’s a compromise between symmetrical presentation, mouth accessibility, and optimal crust/bread ratio.
I do not cut my sandwiches in half. I eat all the crust off around the sandwich till I’m left with the yummy middle to finish with. (Except grilled cheese where a bit of crust must be left to hold on to so all the cheese doesn’t run out.)
Diagonal, unless it’s PB&J. I don’t cut those 'cause it’s messy.
Definitely agree that cheese toasties need to be cut diagonally!
Of course, what we need next is a sandwich quantity poll, viz, if you cut your sandwich in two, do you now have two sandwiches?
It is obvious that you are a sock monkey because you are posting as me. That is exactly how I eat my sandwiches.
It depends on my mood and I have no preference, though I see no reason to cut crusts off. Such a waste of good sandwich!
I prefer to cut in half vertically. Most bread that I use has a distinct upper crust, and I like my sandwich halves to be identical. If I cut diagonally then one piece will have only upper crust. That makes no sense, each piece need to be equal, otherwise it’s discrimination or something.
If you have a *lot of substance in your sandwich, stacked high so that it’s hard to take a bite, you don’t cut them at all lest they fall apart. If they were to be cut, then horizontally, of course.
Those less exciting rectangles to the zesty sandwich triangles will help keep sandwich items where they belong - inside the sammitch hand and not in your lap.
DCnDC - This is a (particularly nasty-looking) cheese toasty. Basically there are (were?) these machines, a little like a George Foreman grill, with clamshell-type hot plates top and bottom, heavily indented so that they squashed your sandwich into a weird shape, almost cut all the way through diagonally. You butter both sides of the bread, put the bottom slice in, fill it with cheese or whatever, then put on the top slice and close the machine until it’s appropriately toasted. Then you eat it, possibly dipped in ketchup. Then you have a heart attack.
See, this is my way of thinking.
Sandwiches need to be cut, because…well, thinking about it, it seems the only reason is “because that’s how mom did it when I was a kid”. But that’s reason enough, plus I guess it gives a more appealing entry-point*. But the asymmetry of diagonally or horizontally sliced bread just bothers me - I’ve never seen a loaf of bread where you can’t make some distinction between top and bottom, and it’s just not right on some deep moral level to have a “bottom” half and a “top” half. Slicing further into quarters or triangles would just feel like far too much effort for a sandwich, so vertical it is.
And if you have enough sandwich guts that spillage is an issue, you shouldn’t be eating it on bread anyway, that belongs on a roll of some sort, which is an entirely different type of sandwich.
*Though this thread has already given us someone who eats sandwiches circularly-ish, and I’ve got a friend who insists on eating pizza crust-first, so obviously YMMV.
Aha. Very nice. Think I saw a late-night infomercial for a similar device a while back.
Great. Now next time I make a simple sandwich to have a simple lunch, I have to spend all kinds of time deciding how I want to cut it.
This is my reason, and when as a wee lass I asked about down the middle versus diagonal cut, the reason I was told.
Plus it’s prettier, an important luncheon consideration.
Wait a minute here–some of you cut your sandwiches horizontally?? :eek:
That’s just sick. You all ought to be ashamed of yourselves.
Generally vertically, although cucumber sandwiches and smoked salmon sandwiches should have the crusts cut off and then be quartered diagonally.