Sandwiches

Opal often eats sandwiches for lunch at school. She attends a radical school which will even let her eat peanut butter, although her years in nutless preschool actually cause her to believe that peanut butter and jelly is for eating out; sunflower butter is what one puts on sandwiches at home. But actually, what she has more often than not is Afghan garlic mint cheese, which is one of those spreadable yogurt cheeses. We buy it at the farmer's market, from an afghan guy who fell in love with her when she was still a toddler, charming easily frightened people into finding his foreign food approachable and clearly not too spicy. Last time his cousin was there, also dishing out samples, and when we walked up he was helping somebody else. He noticed his cousin getting a sample for Opal, and started to instruct her on the correct way to do it "Hers is different, she's my favorite customer. An extra-big one, just garlic mint cheese, but be generous with the cheese. No, here, I'll do it, that's not right. You put some pesto on that and give it to her mother."

I even went to the other farmer's market this week and got olive whole wheat bread (Opal will eat garlic mint cheese on any bread she likes, right up through Swedish orange rye, but I find some combinations wrenching). But today her two sandwiches were on two different kinds of bread, because she couldn't choose between olive whole wheat and "my very own bread made just for me". Which, in truth, wasn't made JUST for her, but it was made for a group including her, from carefully nurtured sourdough starter, by a friend of hers, so even though it is olive-free, she had to have all her breakfast sandwiches and half her lunch on it. Along with "that salad, you know the one, with a drizzle of olive oil and a sprinkle of salt". (Trader Joe's mâche, cunningly made into a salad with, you guessed it, a drizzle of olive oil and a sprinkle of salt. Sometimes a crosscultural splash of ponzu vinegar.)