More Than You Ever Wanted to Know about Sandwiches.

So there's these sandwiches.

Anyone who's done a hotel show will know which sandwiches I mean. They're perfect little bite-sized squares, crusts cut off of the spongey white bread, arranged belly-up to showcase their colourful insides.

(I just remembered that I actually bitched about these sandwiches in one of my Christmas posts. At least I rest assured that - judging from both picture and memory - the sandwiches I make now are WAY yummier.)

Sandwich prep takes up at least 4 hours of my working day, longer on weekends, since everything is done from scratch. Just cutting the dozens of loaves of bread fresh from the baker makes me crave aspirin. I've got it down to a science, however, as one does when one repeats the same process day after day.

It's the cutting of the sandwiches into perfect little crustless pieces that's remained my Achilles' ham-and-cheese Heel. If my knife is even the slightest bit dull - though still sharp enough to cut skin at the slightest touch - the sandwiches come out wonky. Bread tears, veggies fall out, egg salad droops out the sides, I cry bitter rivers.

All this to say!!!! What happened today made everything so worth it.

There's these Weekend Newlywed's Sandwiches. They're a special breed and especially taxing: they must be cut in a specific ham-cheese-lettuce-tomato-cucumber order and wrapped individually, or the service ladies will dump them and order you to do it again. There's one service lady who is infamous in the Garde Manger kitchen: the older chefs call her "Obasan" (The Old Lady), and the younger ones refer to her simply as "Babaa" (Hag), because if the sandwiches are even (oh, horror!) cut crookedly, all hell breaks loose.

No one likes being lectured by a hag in a ceremonial kimono at 8 in the morning.

The first three months I watched the other trainees labour over these tiny sandwiches and listened to them swear when The Hag returned them. And every time, I fingered my dull knife and dreaded the day when I'd be the one all the experienced chefs giggled about to each other. So I was prepared mentally when the task finally became my responsibility. Sharp knife, precise wrapping, every veggie in place. The complaints stopped; they weren't returned once.

Two weekends ago, The Hag started to compliment the sandwiches. Coworkers began passing me to mention that "Oh, The Hag admired the sandwiches again today," or "She said to thank whoever made the sandwiches so nicely." Then today Junior Chef Y came up to me as I was cutting and peered down at the ones I'd already wrapped.

Junior Chef Y is strict and has a sharp tongue when the occasion calls for it, so I feared the worst. Then she murmured, not looking at me: "Yesterday the Obasan was saying that since you started making them, the sandwiches have always been beautiful." and walked off. I bit my tongue against the tide of gleeful shrieking and cut more crusts.

An hour later The Hag came in. All conversation dried up and thirteen pairs of eyes tracked her movements as she walked up to me, carrying the sandwiches.

Then she bowed low. I almost cut my finger off.

"Thank you for always preparing them so beautifully," she gushed. I did not know that Hags could gush. "Every weekend I am always so glad when I see that you are in the kitchen, because it means that they will be perfect."

Seems like gushing Hags were a novelty for everyone else too, because as soon as she left stunned conversation broke out. I blushed furiously at the compliments and admiring looks, the declarations that it only spoke good things about my "seikaku", or personality. Junior Chef F - a kickass veteran I'm kind of crushing on due to his pure kickassery - looked *piercingly* at me and said: "I've only ever heard her compliment one other person in this kitchen, and that was me. I'm impressed, Amanda."

Holy cow, right? ...You still with me? HEY, WAKE UP!!