THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, August 15, 1994 TAG: 9408150236
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Column
SOURCE: Guy Friddell
LENGTH: Medium: 62 lines
Has it crossed your mind that to eat a tomato sandwich, as well as build it, is a work of art?
The tomato sandwich is not, by nature, a safe sandwich to put together and devour. Containing in its simplest form two slippery elements - sliced tomatoes and mayonnaise - it is more of a sandwish. Take care or you may end up with a piece of sandwish on your tie.
The first rule in assembling a tomato sandwich is to spread the mayonnaise atop the bottom slice of bread. ``Why?'' you may well ask, but no one knows why. It is just one of those veils still to be removed.
After all, Einstein's theory of relativity hasn't been totally proved. Every time there's a discovery in the heavens, scientists say that while it does not prove relativity, it is consistent with it - whereupon all heave a sigh of relief.
The main reason for accepting the theory is that Einstein, with that luminous cloud of hair as if his head is in the Milky Way and his huge dark basset eyes peering into the depths, looks so smart.
Putting mayonnaise upon the bottom slice is the theory of relativity in making a tomato sandwich.
Do it and forge on. Just make sure that the spread is done evenly without any slick patches.
If the tomato is a large one, cut a quarter-inch thick slice out of the middle. It will fill the face of the slice of bread without overlap and enhance a firm grip on the sandwich.
To hijack the center slice runs counter to marriage vows; so if, as you complete the sandwich, your spouse enters the kitchen, thrust the sandwich into her (or his) hands and cry, ``Dear heart, I had just finished assembling this center-slice tomato sandwich for VOUS!''
(Don't tell me French isn't the language of diplomacy.)
With the center gone, resort to thin slices and arrange them evenly to avoid any upheaval in the surface. You are dealing with the fundamentals of tectonics, in which great plates of rock in the Earth's interior, forever on the move, sometimes thrust over each other and send shock waves that make the surface quiver and quake.
Don't let that happen in your tomato sandwich with one slice jutting over another. Keep them on an even keel or you'll have an earthquake on your hands. Or in them.
Now we come to the consuming of the sandwich. Some people simply take a big bite in the center of one side. Do that at your peril.
Removing a sizable bite from the center of the outer rim leaves two ends, to the right and left, projecting into the air.
One or the other or both of the outthrust portions may dip and spill filling into your lap. To avert such a breakdown, take a bite from one side and then a bite from the other, and then, quickly, eat the center portion and proceed thus through the rest of the sandwich.
What you must do, colleague Dave Addis observed in passing just now, is preserve, as you eat, the sandwich's structural integrity.
Frank Lloyd Wright couldn't have put it better. by CNB