The All Day Breakfast-Lunch-and-Dinner (and Snacks) Sandwich of Dreams

Like a lot of good things – Martin Luther’s vision for the future of race relations, the Beatles’ name, “Poor, poor Pharaoh” sung by Jason Donovan in the Joseph musical – it came to be in a dream. [that’s “to be in a dream”, not to me in a dream… me and Martin never even met!]

I couldn’t sleep for ages because I’d been a little kettle-happy with a new jar of Lidl coffee. Feeling jittery, I held my left breast for comfort and thought about Marks and Spencers’ sandwiches, which I miss. When sleep finally lets me in, in a tickly, half-hearted way, these sandwiches - like stars - aligned.

If you can have an all-day-breakfast sandwich, why – why – couldn’t you have an all-day-breakfast-lunch-and-dinner sandwich? An all-day all-day sandwich. A long and beautiful sandwich filled with all meals, and inter-meals, in chronological order.

When I woke up, I thought: was that just full-moon craziness? But I broached the subject with trusted friends and found they too were able to free their minds and think outside the fridge.

On the 7th of March, three musketeers set about turning fantasy into meal-ity. The All Day Breakfast-Lunch-and-Dinner (and snacks) Sandwich / El Bocadillo de Sueños was born.

First, we metaphorically drew up a menu. Here it is: unmetaphorically, so you can read it.

Breakfast: English - sausages, baked beans (Heinz), bacon, grilled tomatoes, mushrooms, and eggs plural (fried).

Lunch: Sandwich – tuna mayonnaise on brown bread, cherry tomato garnish, crisps (for crunch)

Afternoon tea: Scone, jam (strawberry), cream (spray)

Aperitif: olives (stuffed with anchovies, salty)

Dinner: Lasagne (meat), broccoli (health)

Dessert: Crème Catalan, a plum the colour of sunset (5-a-day)

With a list written on a wet piece of paper, we set out for Al Campo, a supermarket big enough to spark panic attacks. Being in Spain we had to make certain compromises: the sausages would have to be the sort that stay pink as a party ring no matter how long you cook them; the scone would have to be a muffin, that came in a hermetically- sealed plastic bag. I don’t know what hermetically means, but I think it works well here.

Additionally, regarding the bread, I’m just going to come right out there and say it: there were no French baguettes left, ok? So we bought two of the longest loafettes they still had. We would weld them together with mayonnaise.

Once home, we spread out the goods on the kitchen floor. This was so I could take a photo, rather than to get them dirty.



And here is the oven we would use. Her name is Agni.



I was charged with the tuna sandwich, which I immediately ruined.

Paul took control of the breakfast; laying meats on the grill pan, flipping them over when they needed it, shuffling them around, taking them off when they were done… he worked hard and efficiently. He did the eggs too, with too much grease for my liking, but since his grilling was good, I forgave him.

Tara sliced mushrooms, and sorted out the olives, and played a lot with a dog, so I hope she frequently washed her hands.

Soon, it was starting to come together. The lasagne, flamboyantly sprinkled with oregano, was blistering away in the microwave... the crème Catalane was lying, lumpy and lactose-y, in its terracotta plastic pot.

I re-crafted the tuna sandwich, prepared the beverages (orange juice-slash-Fanta for breakfast, tea for the scone, and vino for the olive aperitif) and, with the long knife of a murderer, performed the bread surgery. The journey was long, and the road was slippery with Paul’s excessive oil, but we’d nearly made it.

The components were completed.

Breaker

Lunch

High Tea

Apero on the terrace

Dins

Pudding

Captain Birdseye's View

A last minute addition to the table was a little fish finger salad (above, left). Why, you ask? Why not, is surely a better question.

Finally, to use the culinary term, we squodged all the meals into the bread, using our hands. We sucked our fingers clean in disbelief.

And from the skies above, we heard Carmina Burana.

He was ready.

Bigger photo? Here

And then we began to eat. I think I speak for all of us when I say it was a seminal moment in our lives.

There are very few times during your time on the planet when you will get to say “oh, I just found a bit of jam on my sausage” or “I think I’m going to quickly eat lunch first and save breakfast for last”. This was one of them.

In fairness, the latter was a good strategy. Lunch was a mildly crap; too much bread and too little tuna, although the crisps (Walker’s Sensations, no less) held their own. The scone-in-sandwich – with extra cream and jam layers betwixt the scone perimeter and the bread – was sugary carbohydrate joy, though unfortunately close to the fish-olives.

The lasagne section was always going to be a winner, and cross-contamination with the crème Catalan only lifted it to another level. The broccoli let me down somewhat, but it has been such a faithful friend over the years, I will not badmouth it.

Breakfast was operatic – pretty pink sausages, bacon caramelized to leather, squeezy mushrooms, a lost crisp… all doused in baked beans and egg yolk. Oh my.

In its entirety, the sandwich is perfection. It takes little under 30 minutes to get through the entire day.

Afterwards, as we lie very still and try to avoid unnecessary communication, our stomachs make noises I have never heard before.

“They are singing with happiness,” I try and reassure the others.

Fortunately we watch a film that is so unfathomably long (The Curious Case of Benjamin “Bad acting” Button), that by the time we are finished, our stomachs are merely whispering.

I am sure I hear them say thank you.