A spring stroll in the sandwiches

This week, the weather let me pretend it's spring! It was warm enough that when I walked yesterday, I kept hoping I had spotted my first snake for the year on the trail ahead, only to realize it was just a stick when I got closer. (Darn! Not this time...) So for a warmer-than-the-usual January weekend, I'm bringing in a bit of early spring from Good Housekeeping's Soups/ Salads/ Sandwiches (1971).

Yep! Today we have sandwiches that were really conceived as craft projects. Sandwiches by the Mile gives us a nice little spring lane lined with lunch meat roses on one side and cucumber bushes on the other. In the middle is a beautiful line of cobras rearing up and shrunken heads on pikes.... or maybe the olives are supposed to be flowers and the peppers are leaves. Your call.

The recipe doesn't actually explain what the various fillings are supposed to represent, so my rearing cobras and shrunken heads are completely valid interpretations. You can take the walk on your path, and I'll take mine on my path.

Sandwiches by the Mile isn't the only scenic sandwich, though. We also have a high-rise with a rooftop garden and another garden that might temporarily pass as a cake... until somebody takes a bite.

The high-rise is Striped Bread-and-Butter Loaf:

I guess it's billed as "Bread-and-Butter" because they don't want to advertise how much the filling tastes like dirt-- full of grated radishes (hot dirt) and caraway seeds (dirty gravel). Cheese butter and curry butter might be fine, but you'd have to be waaay more into radishes and caraway than I am to think either of those other fillings sound appealing.

While sandwich loaves weren't all that uncommon, the round Sandwich Torte was a bit new to me. Since it's round, the illusion that it's a cake is much more persuasive than for the loaf-shaped versions. The almond flowers on the sides and the "carrots" on the top might even lead one to assume this is a carrot cake, at least until the shrimp and olives give it away!

Far from being carrot cake, Sandwich Torte is filled with blue cheese and canned deviled ham, then decorated with horseradish cream cheese, the aforementioned shrimp, olives, and almonds, and smoked-salmon-and-dill "carrots."

It is, unfortunately, just as much a carrot cake as a day in January is an actual spring day: a good representation of it from a distance, but don't look too close or you'll be disappointed.

If you've got a temporary reprieve from winter too, enjoy it while it lasts! I'm off to spot my first snake of the year. It will happen this time. (Damn! Stick again.)