An ode to the Swiss cheese & tomato sandwich

how I tap into life's simple pleasures. plus a prompt from me ;)

Swiss cheese and tomato. A classic combo that is perfectly delicious because it is so simple, and was my mom’s lunch of choice several days a week when we were growing up. Commonly, she would layer her Swiss cheese upon a piece of Calandra’s Bakery bread (a Northern NJ thing, IYKYK) - always toasted and always open faced.

The nutty, slightly sweet flavors commingling on the bread, the juices of the tomato running down our hands and chins as kids. My mom understood that a generous slick of mayo (Hellman’s please & always) and a juicy ripe tomato, was literally all you needed to make a sandwich that would really sing.

Just thinking about this basic beautiful sandwich transports me to springtime 1994, Flanders NJ. So when I made this sandwich for myself today at my home in Pasadena, and my teeth ripped into the toasted baguette (a close second to Calandra’s), I could practically feel my childhood dog brushing up against my feet waiting for what food scraps might fall.

This idea of taste and memory, the one I continue to visit in my cooking again and again, is nothing new. “Precious fragments” as they are referred to by Marigold Linton, a well known autobiographical memory researcher, are the products of common every-day experiences such as eating a piece of cake, bringing to mind a past experience evoked by the taste. The Proust Effect, which you may have heard of before, refers directly to the “involuntary memories” (he coined this term) and came from his own experience of eating a madeleine dunked in tea that allowed him to access a long forgotten child hood memory.

I started using the term MouthBrain to refer to my style of cooking 7 or 8 years ago. This facet of my culinary journey has propelled me towards food experiences that engage those memories. The way I look at it, cooking this way has become part of a healing process, allowing me time to reflect and be with my childhood self, relishing in the joy of a meal or dish, and nourishing my current self all the while.

Let me explain further. For many of us who have experienced a childhood trauma (technically I was a young adult but the same diagnosis applies), clinicians say that memories are often blocked, fragmented, or even lost through a type of natural dissociation. When I use this method of connecting my taste and memories from childhood in my cooking, I am intentionally trying to retrieve certain memories from a strange and necessary form of amnesia.

Insert Swiss cheese and tomato sandwiches.

But also, sour cream and fresh berries, fudgesicles, crisp apple slices and cheddar cheese, cucumbers with olive oil stuffed into warm pita with labneh, cold sesame noodles, schnitzel with noodles (lol, only you Sound of Music heads will get it), kimchi quesadillas, couscous salads, peanut butter date banana smoothies. Simple pleasures, linked to different chapters of my life, that will send me somewhere else and satiate me every time.

So here’s the prompt:

The next time you go to make a sandwich try using YOUR MouthBrain. Evoke something that you remember eating as a kid. But, don’t just picture any sandwich. Try to tap into what makes The Sandwich part of your precious fragments.

Some questions you can ask yourself:

• Is the taste/memory tied the ingredients or how they layer?

• Does the type of bread matter? what did you have around growing up?

• Are there varying temperatures or textures that you can recall being important?

• Where would you find yourself when you were eating it? At home at the kitchen counter, cross legged at a picnic, on the sidelines at a siblings soccer game?

• Was it summertime? did it smell like browning butter or grilled onions?

• Who was there with you?

• Did everyone eat it this way or only you?

Use those memories to transport yourself and see what you come up with. That first bite will tell you everything you need to know. Then, if you feel so inclined, I would love if you would send me a picture of your sandwich and tell me all about the journey it took you on. Seriously! I can’t wait to see where you end up.

Here’s mine:

I am barefoot in my suburban kitchen circa 1994. We are on spring break from school, the TV is on in the other room playing Rocko’s Modern Life, and I need lunch. Bread gets toasted while I open the cheese drawer in the fridge and yank out what I need. The toaster pops! I slather generously with Hellman’s mayo and place Swiss cheese 2 or 3 layers deep in ripped pieces so the layers are not even exactly. Then I add thick tomatoes cut into imperfect wedge-like-slices. I sprinkle salt and crack some pepper before cutting it in half. I keep it open faced because my Mom understood the importance of this sandwich having mouthfeel. I put it on one of our plates - which were white with a sort Ralph Lauren shade pinkish border along the rim. I pull up to my seat at the table, which I understood to be second from the end even though it was a circular table (kid logic, go figure), and grab the Cape Cod potato chips from our well stocked snack pantry. For every bite of sandwich I likely eat a chip and when I’m done I like my finger to get the crumbs off the plate, too. Into the dishwasher or sink and back to watching TV with my siblings in the other room.