The universal urge to make a Big Stupid Sandwich

The Friday Newsletter is left to its own devices, and immediately goes feral

The words glowed in front of my eyes. I was like Russell Crowe’s version of mathematician John Nash in A Beautiful Mind, but instead of seeing complex equations, I was seeing my immediate future.

I am going to eat something stupid.

Last weekend, my wife scheduled a brief jaunt to Boston to see our niece get her Master’s degree from Emerson College. This meant that I would be home with the kids, but more importantly: I would have a chance to indulge my dumbest impulses.

There’s a tweet of mine—some of you may know it—that I fired off in haste on some similar evening a while back. It was a silly thought, but it resonated with a lot people, and I still see it cited regularly it more than five years later.

Along with “likes are now florps”—a sentiment that now seems quaint given that Twitter is now a hate-speech/crypto-scam/pornbot dumpster fire—this is my lasting Twitter legacy. Whatever our situation—no matter how mature we are, no matter how good we are at cooking or how much we enjoy a nice meal—we can all relate to the impulse to eat something stupid when left to our own devices.

Of course, this can mean different things to different people.

Maybe for you it’s Arby’s or Taco Bell. Maybe it’s eating pepperoni straight from the package while standing over the sink. Maybe it’s downing a whole family-size carton of Whoppers.

Who’s to say? We must all take these journeys alone.

For me, it means cooking exactly what I want.

Friends, it’s Friday at The Action Cookbook Newsletter.

Today, I’ve got:

• A dish tailored to my basest culinary instincts!

• A fraught journey to a tasty cocktail!

• Tailored selections in books, music and movies!

• So much more!

Friends? Let’s go feral.

7) The Universal Urge to Make a Big Stupid Sandwich

Since the beginning of time, man has yearned to make a giant sandwich.

There’s just something about it. A meal hits different when you’re channeling your inner Dagwood, seeing just how much flavor you can pack between two slices of bread while maintaining a shred of structural integrity and plausible consumability.

I knew from the start that my Alone Time Meal was going to be a big sandwich.

The question was just how elaborate I could make it.