Provolone and Mayo

02/28/2007

I decided yesterday to write something and needed a theme.  Believe it or not, after writing sixty-eight of these short postings this year – my first was entered exactly one year ago today – coming up with a theme or title is not all that easy, especially for one such as me with a diminishing capacity.  The decision came to me as I was eating my lunch yesterday sitting in the driver’s seat of my car on the third floor of the parking deck at Dulles International Airport.  I am on a provolone with mayo, lettuce and tomato sandwich kick.

Critter, commonly referred to as meat, and I do not get along.  I am an ovo-lacto vegetarian, though it would be hard for you to tell looking at my ever increasing waistline these days.  Vegetarians are not necessarily skinny and this one sure as hell isn’t.  My lunch sandwich of choice is as described above, I dig provolone.  Don’t know when or where it started, but I love it.  My travels have allowed me to locate many sandwich shops that will make this sandwich for me, but I have to do a lot of explaining.  I get some weird looks with questioning eyes – “You want what?” Three of these shops standout as favorites and I am able to order this luscious confection (it’s sweet for me) – two on the way to BWI airport and one very near Dulles in Leesburg, VA.  These are the ones I frequent most.  I make this sandwich at home, too, and I eat there almost everyday when not traveling out of town.  I am a creature of habit.

My children know I get stuck on these little eating whims.  Many years ago I went through a lot of them.  Once I got on a milk shake kick.  Everyday I would stop at some little shop I knew that made good milk shakes.  Typically these were found in small mom-and-pop ice cream shops.  I knew where the best ones could be found in any town in Virginia.  Another time it was M&M Peanuts.  That lasted for about a year, a small bag every afternoon.  I did a stint where I had a little coconut pie every afternoon.  I finally broke the habit when I reached whale weight.  At some point provolone with mayo will have to go the way of the milk shake…whale weight ain’t that far off.

Since I do not do the meat thing, I have no idea what I might find to replace the provolone with mayo.  Provolone has a good flavor: sweeter than Swiss cheese with a smoother consistency, and not as soft as Munster.  I am not a big Munster fan.  American pasteurized cheeses tend to be a little wimpy for me.  I like bold cheeses, but I don’t think about cheese a lot, though I think The Nancy will now be calling me a cheese snob.  I think it may be the mayo that makes this sandwich such a delight for me.  It’s the mayo that is the catalyst of my weight gain.  I blame the mayo. 

Fifteen years ago, during the height of my mid-life crisis, I gave up ingesting mayonnaise and butter and a lot of high-fat foods.  My cholesterol immediately dove from 220 to 126.  My weight dropped (I gave up a lot of stuff, but mostly eating like a pig) from 243 to as low as 186.  The mid-life thing is way behind me now.  The mistake I made at the end of the crisis phase was eating that one Lay’s potato chip in 1995.

I wonder how well provolone and mustard will match up.

And that is all I have to say about that…

PS: If you happen to be in Leesburg, VA and want a good sandwich, checkout this place at http://www.delisouth.com.