It's What's Between

They may be a bunch of tree-dwelling, pointy-eared freaks, but those Keebler Elves work some magic with their tiny ovens.

I needed food fast. I was deep within the bowels of Denver airport in the back of its subterranean regional jet terminal. With 10 minutes before my flight, I hurried back through the dark corridors to acquire quick and easy sustenance.

I grabbed a pack of Club and Cheddar sandwich crackers at the newsstand for a buck and change. I'll say right now that they the first sandwiches in a long while I highly recommend. Their many positive traits are as follows:
Both salty and cheesyPlentiful: eight sandies for under two bucksInstead of boring old bread, the filling is sandwiched by crackers, and not just any crackers but Club crackers, which are by all measures the top cracker on the market today.Cheese filling is cheddar cheese, which a reliable and good cheese if not the fanciest. It is not a pretentious cheese.This cheese, it's real, as the package clearly states…

Any Denver-based sandwich eater worth his or her salt or pepper knows that one of the top sandwiches is The Spot's Cajun Chicken, which the esteemed Dr. Z introduced me to in 2004. At least it was one of Denver's top sandies until The Spot's cruel management dropped it from the menu, pretending it never existed in a Stalinesque move. Following that betrayal, The Spot ceased own a spot in my heart, and it was years before I gave it another chance.

Last week, I finally returned to discover the exalted Cajun Chicken is back. No fanfare; the sandy's just on the menu again. Needless to say, I ordered the long-missed sandwich. It's very much the same. It came on a cornmeal powdered kaiser bun with a heap of uncalled-for veggies on the side. Most importantly, the basket included a little tub of The Spot's magic Cajun sauce, without which, the sandwich is powerless. If you feel like putting a bunch of lettuce and onions and pickles on it too, fine — it's all there f…

The Background
Today began like every weekday: I hit the snooze button several times, slept a bit more in the shower, brewed some Dunkin' Donuts coffee for the road and forgot my lunch.

Although optimism doesn't come naturally to me, my professional training has taught me to find a positive spin in every bad situation. This technique allowed me to transform forgetting today's forgotten lunch into a Sanditunity.

Lacking the gumption to leave the office to buy a sandwich, I said a brief, quiet prayer to the Sandwich Gods that some quasi-edible manna would be for sale in the vending machine. There, I discovered a grizzly and mumbly man stocking the machine with fresh but unappetizing fare.

"Fresh sandies!" I exclaimed to myself silently. I waited for the bearded sandwich stocker to leave before returning to examine what treasures he had left. It felt like I imagine Christmas feels in countries in desperate need of food. A woman buying a breakfast burrito warned me of &q…

Many of my associates have lamented the lack of olives on Subway sandwiches, while others have griped that a request for “just a little mayo” is oft-interpreted as “all of your mayo, please.” I prefer the oil and vinegar, which the sandwichier also goes crazy with. But my concern is more with the lack of olives.Regardless of which sub I order, I always get tomatoes, banana peppers, spinach and olives. Without fail, the sandy artisan delicately places each sliced black olive, one by one, on the sandwich … usually five or six total. I’ve given up on asking for more because the request is usually met with a sigh and the placement of three additional olives, followed by a look of “anything else, your majesty?”According to Subway’s FAQ, the Olive Problem is the blame of a formula. It says “all restaurants must follow a formula when preparing subs and salads,” adding that “charging for extra toppings is not recommended.” Does this mean some Subways will actually charge you for extra olives?…

I’ve been so busy this week that I haven’t eaten any sandies. That should tell you something considering the Sandy Council’s 1986 ad campaign touting “Sandies: Nature’s Fastest Food ©.”Instead, I have been eating pork chops, pretzels with hummus and American cheese singles. This diet ensures both authenticity as I live the Bachelor Lifestyle and sufficient intake of the three building blocks of food: fat, carbohydrate and protein — when supplemented with vitamins, these will keep you nourished, technically. Note: chewable children’s vitamins, while delicious, have been found, by me, not to suffice, unless you also eat vegetables besides onions and potatoes. Over the four years I experimented with the Flinstonesque Zippy Zoo vitamins, I contracted scurvy, yellow fever, the Black Death©, rickets and several other diseases with funny names. If Zippy Zoo vitamins were a sandwich, they would receive 4.5 sandies for taste and 2 sandies for nutritional value.During what downtime I’ve had, I’…

There has been a lot of talk in the mainstream press lately about the so-called "Sandwich-beating epidemic." It seems every day's news features a story about some guy pounded with fists and pipes over a sandwich.

While I admit the rise of anti-sandwich hooliganism is a growing problem, it has not reached the heights fear-mongering news outlets imply.

For example, take this story from today's Cyprus Mail: Man savagely beaten as he waited for sandwich.

Reporter John Leonidou (whose work I typically admire, by the way) tells the tale of a man hospitalized by drunken youths. Despite John's focus on the sandwich-waiting angle in the lede, and some editor's sensationalistic headline, there's no indication that the beating was directly related to the victim's sandwich purchase. In fact, I doubt it was; sandwich-hate gangs barely have a presence in Cyprus.

Now consider a Sept. 3 This Is Lancashire article, which relayed the sad news that former Blackburn Rugby Un…