Now that tens and tens of people have read our blog, they may be asking, why name a blog after frozen sandwiches? Simple- it's called branding. “Frozen Sandwiches” just happens to be the name of my and Joy’s forthcoming book (take note publishers and/or agents who may or may not be trolling along this website looking for brilliant yet unrepresented writers!).
As some readers might have guessed already, this blog is based on the concept that the Boyds had a less than normal childhood. Most of the stories you will read about on this blog will center on Phil and Syl’s unending quest to save time and money. This story addresses one of Syl's schemes to turn her kitchen into a Kathie Lee Gifford-style sandwich sweatshop. Some have heard us tell the childhood story about the frozen sandwiches, but for those of you who were not lucky enough to hear it firsthand, you can read about it when you buy our book...once it’s written. But for now, I will give you what we writers in the "biz" call a teaser to keep your literary appetites whetted:
Throughout my Baptist childhood, Sundays were, of course, reserved for church. Our family attended services twice every Sunday- once in the morning and once at night. Apparently one sermon about brimstone and “backsliding” wasn't enough (I started looking at table salt as less like a flavor enhancer and more like human remains when I learned the fate of Lot's wife at the tender age of five). Nevertheless, while the other dedicated Baptist families' children relaxed (or, gasp! played!) in the afternoon respite between memorizing Bible verses and Sword Drills, the Boyd kids had work to do. Often I was invited to a friend's house after morning services, but had to reject the invitation because I had to work in our Sunday sandwich sweatshop.
I imagine that Syl envisioned the sweatshop one day early on in her childbearing years, concluding that, that while making one child's school lunch wasn't overly burdensome, making four lunches every day was an inefficient use of her time. So she outsourced the lunch-making responsibilities to her own brood. Every Sunday afternoon, the four of us arranged a Ford Assembly Line of bread, peanut butter, jelly, pre-packaged meat, government cheese, mayo, and mustard and started slapping together ingredients to make sandwiches. Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays were PB&J days (read: cheapest of sandwiches) and Tuesdays and Thursdays were mystery meat days. Every week, we hastily made 20 sandwiches, put them in plastic baggies, shoved them back into the original bread bags, and crammed them in the freezer to be taken out every morning before school.
If you think it's impossible to mess up PB&J, you would be wrong. Freezing PB&J sandwiches is an art form. The ratio of peanut butter to jelly must be perfect. Too little jelly, and the thawed sandwich tasted like the dry husk of a peanut shell. Too much jelly, and the de-frosting process would render the bread a soggy, purple-tinged lump of goo. Creating and freezing pre-packaged meat sandwiches posed another challenge. While James and I maintained a healthy love for any and all sandwich ingredients, Joy was far more picky—only mayo and mystery meat on her sandwich. Absolutely NO cheese or mustard. Josh was no better; only mustard and cheese and mystery meat would do. For a child in a normal family whose mother made individual lunches every day, this would not be an issue. However, as we created all our sandwiches for every child for every lunch for every day of the week, our only solution to the meat madness was to put our initials on our sandwich baggies. This proved troublesome as all of our first names started with “J.” To get around this, we’d take a marker and scribble “J,” followed by our middle initials on the baggies, shove the sandwiches back into the bread bag, and hope that somehow our initials would remain intact in the freezer when we pulled them out in the morning. They never did. Since the sandwiches were frozen solid in breadcicle form, the insides were a mystery by the next day. In fact, we probably wasted more time in the morning arguing about whether the black hieroglyphic on the middle of a baggie was an “A” or a “D” than it would have taken to make a fresh sandwich.
The sandwich tribulations on Tuesdays and Thursdays did not end when we each grabbed what we believed was our mystery meat sandwich. The next round of trials began at lunchtime. Although most adults consider “lunchtime” to be some time between 12 and 2 p.m., elementary schools do not. My entire elementary career was plagued by 10:30 a.m. “lunches.” While I am not a scientist, I know for a fact that a frozen sandwich requires a LOT longer than 4 hours to defrost. There's nothing worse than biting into a middle of a soggy sandwich only to discover that the crunching sound you hear is not lettuce, but your tooth cracking on frozen bologna meat. In Joy's case, a close second was when she realized she had gotten (gasp!) a mustard-filled American cheese meat sandwich. Now, dear readers, please picture Joy in her pink culottes with giant glasses and greasy hair tromping across the cafeteria to James and his friends at their wannabe cool table to demand her rightful sandwich only to see its crumbly remains entering James' mouth--a sad occurrence, indeed.
If you’re one of the lucky ones whose mother made your school lunch every day (including your sandwich), you owe her a debt of gratitude. Call her and thank her. To this day, Joy hates sandwiches. Although I still love sandwiches (all kinds!), I don’t dive into one willy-nilly. I still think twice before biting into a sandwich that feels chilled—and, in a tribute to Lot’s wife, I certainly don't put salt on it.
As some readers might have guessed already, this blog is based on the concept that the Boyds had a less than normal childhood. Most of the stories you will read about on this blog will center on Phil and Syl’s unending quest to save time and money. This story addresses one of Syl's schemes to turn her kitchen into a Kathie Lee Gifford-style sandwich sweatshop. Some have heard us tell the childhood story about the frozen sandwiches, but for those of you who were not lucky enough to hear it firsthand, you can read about it when you buy our book...once it’s written. But for now, I will give you what we writers in the "biz" call a teaser to keep your literary appetites whetted:
Throughout my Baptist childhood, Sundays were, of course, reserved for church. Our family attended services twice every Sunday- once in the morning and once at night. Apparently one sermon about brimstone and “backsliding” wasn't enough (I started looking at table salt as less like a flavor enhancer and more like human remains when I learned the fate of Lot's wife at the tender age of five). Nevertheless, while the other dedicated Baptist families' children relaxed (or, gasp! played!) in the afternoon respite between memorizing Bible verses and Sword Drills, the Boyd kids had work to do. Often I was invited to a friend's house after morning services, but had to reject the invitation because I had to work in our Sunday sandwich sweatshop.
I imagine that Syl envisioned the sweatshop one day early on in her childbearing years, concluding that, that while making one child's school lunch wasn't overly burdensome, making four lunches every day was an inefficient use of her time. So she outsourced the lunch-making responsibilities to her own brood. Every Sunday afternoon, the four of us arranged a Ford Assembly Line of bread, peanut butter, jelly, pre-packaged meat, government cheese, mayo, and mustard and started slapping together ingredients to make sandwiches. Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays were PB&J days (read: cheapest of sandwiches) and Tuesdays and Thursdays were mystery meat days. Every week, we hastily made 20 sandwiches, put them in plastic baggies, shoved them back into the original bread bags, and crammed them in the freezer to be taken out every morning before school.
If you think it's impossible to mess up PB&J, you would be wrong. Freezing PB&J sandwiches is an art form. The ratio of peanut butter to jelly must be perfect. Too little jelly, and the thawed sandwich tasted like the dry husk of a peanut shell. Too much jelly, and the de-frosting process would render the bread a soggy, purple-tinged lump of goo. Creating and freezing pre-packaged meat sandwiches posed another challenge. While James and I maintained a healthy love for any and all sandwich ingredients, Joy was far more picky—only mayo and mystery meat on her sandwich. Absolutely NO cheese or mustard. Josh was no better; only mustard and cheese and mystery meat would do. For a child in a normal family whose mother made individual lunches every day, this would not be an issue. However, as we created all our sandwiches for every child for every lunch for every day of the week, our only solution to the meat madness was to put our initials on our sandwich baggies. This proved troublesome as all of our first names started with “J.” To get around this, we’d take a marker and scribble “J,” followed by our middle initials on the baggies, shove the sandwiches back into the bread bag, and hope that somehow our initials would remain intact in the freezer when we pulled them out in the morning. They never did. Since the sandwiches were frozen solid in breadcicle form, the insides were a mystery by the next day. In fact, we probably wasted more time in the morning arguing about whether the black hieroglyphic on the middle of a baggie was an “A” or a “D” than it would have taken to make a fresh sandwich.
The sandwich tribulations on Tuesdays and Thursdays did not end when we each grabbed what we believed was our mystery meat sandwich. The next round of trials began at lunchtime. Although most adults consider “lunchtime” to be some time between 12 and 2 p.m., elementary schools do not. My entire elementary career was plagued by 10:30 a.m. “lunches.” While I am not a scientist, I know for a fact that a frozen sandwich requires a LOT longer than 4 hours to defrost. There's nothing worse than biting into a middle of a soggy sandwich only to discover that the crunching sound you hear is not lettuce, but your tooth cracking on frozen bologna meat. In Joy's case, a close second was when she realized she had gotten (gasp!) a mustard-filled American cheese meat sandwich. Now, dear readers, please picture Joy in her pink culottes with giant glasses and greasy hair tromping across the cafeteria to James and his friends at their wannabe cool table to demand her rightful sandwich only to see its crumbly remains entering James' mouth--a sad occurrence, indeed.
If you’re one of the lucky ones whose mother made your school lunch every day (including your sandwich), you owe her a debt of gratitude. Call her and thank her. To this day, Joy hates sandwiches. Although I still love sandwiches (all kinds!), I don’t dive into one willy-nilly. I still think twice before biting into a sandwich that feels chilled—and, in a tribute to Lot’s wife, I certainly don't put salt on it.
Bravo, sis! I laughed aloud. Oh, the memories. There was nothing like the experience of biting into the crisp, frozen center of what used to be a lubricated, preservative filled lunch "meat" to the point where in order to glean some caloric intake so that there would be enough fuel to make it through those intense school days we adapted and learned to simply avoid the middle of the sandwich.
ReplyDeleteAnd nothing beat the perplexed looks on our classmates faces when we would have to cross social boundaries in order to procure the right sandwich with our smeared initials on the baggie. We, of course, thought this was normal behavior and were quite astonished to learn at some point that other families had no such sweat shop or didn't drink powdered milk which I'm sure will be the subject of a future post which will explain much about the amazon like tendencies of my sisters.
Excellent work on this post, sis.