My Kingdom for a Sandwich

Posted On February 20, 2026

When I was a kid growing up, my mom strictly enforced a great many food quotas. Woe be to the kid who got caught violating any of them.

My younger brother & I were allowed one small glass of orange juice each morning. Brown bag lunch desserts had a strict two cookie limit. Kids in our house were only allowed to drink “mixed milk”. One of our daily chores was mixing the pitcher of half Carnation Instant Milk/ half whole milk that always graced our refrigerator. The only whole milk I ever drank straight was the cartoon I bought for five cents in the school cafeteria.

There was one kid food staple, however, that I could have as many of as I wanted. Mom’s universal answer to every “But Mom, I’m starving!” utterance:

“If you’re that hungry, go make a sandwich.”

So, from a very young age, that’s what I did.

Two of my favorite sandwich ingredients were always peanut butter and jelly, on whatever store brand sliced bread loaf was on sale that week when Mom grocery shopped, which occasionally included loaves of something called “Wonder Bread”. Looking back, I’m not sure “Wonder Bread” was even real bread, but it sure made great sandwiches. Emptied bread loaf plastic wrappers also doubled as boot liners and lunch bags.

Our primary sandwich ingredients were, of course peanut butter & jelly. Well, jam, actually, because Mom always made her own home made freezer jam from berries we picked during the summer months. She would put it in the little pastic margarine containers that held the soft yellow substance we substituted for butter. Mom made all manner of freezer jams; strawberry, blackberry, blueberry, even peach, but my favorite was raspberry, of which Mom made two variteties- red & black raspberry, or as it was better known-“black cap”.

We kids ate whatever peanut butter was on sale or Mom had a coupon for when she went grocery shopping that week. Sometimes it was Peter Pan, sometimes it was Skippy, other times it was Jiff. Thre were two different peanut butter variants to choose from on grocery store shelves; creamy & crunchy. Of course, “Choosy Mother’s chose Jiff”, but whichever peanut butter brand Mom chose that week for us kids to make sandwiches with, my favorite was always the crunchy kind with little peanut bits in it.

I could have all the sandwiches made with peanut butter & jelly that I wanted. I used PB & J in every sandwich combo imaginable to man- the standard “PB & J”, peanut butter & bologna, jelly & mayonnaise, even one of my favorites, peanut butter & bananas, which through extensively field tested sandwich creation experimentation, I discovered was far better with a healthy base layer of peach or strawberry jam added.

Speaking of sandwich combos, right below PB & J on the list was another sandwich combo creation staple; Oscar Mayer bologna.

“The Classic”

A whole generation of kids grew up singing that jingle:

“My bologna has a first name, it’s O-S-C-A-R

My bologna has a second name, it’s M-A-Y-E-R

Oh, I love to eat it every day, and if you ask me why I’ll say…

‘Cause Oscar Mayer has a way with B-O-L-O-G-N-A”

In our family’s household, there was simply no other acceptable brand of bologna, which I still to this day don’t understand why they spelled it that way, because it should be B-A-L-O-N-E-Y. Apparently those Oscar Mayer people can’t spell. But however you spell it, just don’t forget to remove the little red plastic ring around your sandwich slice before biting into it!

Though the base standard bologna sandwich combo in our house was bologna & mustard, I learned at an early age that those Oscar Mayer bologna slices went pretty good as a sandwich meat with just about everything.

“The After School Special”

My dad liked bologna and Miracle Whip, his perferred version of what I eventually discovered through sandwich consumption at various friends’ houses, was someone’s sorry attempt at imitating Hellmann’s REAL mayonnaise. The Miracle Whip vs mayonnaise controvesry remained a hotly debated Monroe household issue throughout my dad’s lifetime. I personally can’t stand that Miracle Whip fake mayonnaise stuff, but when we knew Dad was coming to visit, we always had to go buy some.

Regardless, as a kid I ate bologna with just about everything; mustard (always French’s), ketchup (always Heinz), and Hellmann’s REAL mayonnaise (As long as peanut butter was added. I never much cared for straight bologna and mayonnaise.) Come to think of it though, I don’t recall ever trying bologna & jelly.

Next on the sandwich creation list below bologna was canned Starkist tuna fish. Tuna & mayo; tuna, chopped onions & mayo; tuna, chopped olives & mayo, tuna fish chopped dill pickles & mayo, tuna fish & egg salad…the list went on & on. There was almost no end to the sandwich combo possibilites where tuna fish was involved, though I drew the line at tuna fish sandwiches with peanut butter & jelly.

Which brings me to the next sandwich staple; egg salad. Making egg salad was easy. Mom taught us kids at an early age how to hard boil & shuck eggs, then how to crush them down into a big bowl, add a big hunk of mayonnaise, give it a good stir, & then if we wanted to, start adding stuff. I liked making my own sandwich egg salad, because if Mom or Dad made it, they always used Miracle Whip.

Egg salad was like tuna fish. It went with most everything. Egg salad went especially well when combined in a sandwich with other lunch meats; egg salad & bologna, egg salad & ham One of my favorite egg salad sandwich combos was egg salad & chicken salad mixed with chopped onions, dill pickles, olives & a healthy dose of black pepper. One thing however, that egg salad absolutely DID NOT go with was peanut butter & jelly. Trust me when I say this.

Lunch meat in our household was a sandwich category all to itself. Aside from the afore mentioned bologna and ham, there was sliced salami, and on occasion when it was on sale, sliced chicken (which I’m not sure really was that). We rarely had roast beef. It was just too expensive and spoiled way too fast. Instead we always had on hand a variety of canned meats; Vienna Sausages, deviled ham, & a salty substance called “potted meat”.

There was also always canned SPAM in Mom’s cupboard too, but that was for dinner. Us kids only had it for sandwiches when there were leftovers. Regardless, I liked them all as sandwich building material, most generally with mayonnaise.

Speaking of leftovers, leftover meatloaf (which we ate for dinner a lot) with ketchup made pretty good sandwiches. Now that I think about it, ketchup also made a respectable Wonder Bread sandwich all by itself. So did mayonnaise, for that matter. Mustard, on the other hand, was stricly a condiment.

Then there was liverwurst, a dark brown meatlike substance that came in a tube. It wasn’t really spreadable. We always cut it in slices. I was always a little suspicious of liverwurst, but my dad swore by it & it made pretty good sandwiches, so I ate it, usually in combination with onions & mayonnaise, mustard or both.

“Liverwurst & Onions”

That leads me to another of my major childhood sandwich staples; grilled cheese!

Sandwich cheese in my house when I was growing up came in one of two formats, individually wrapped Kraft cheese slices, or a big foil wrapped orange block of fake cheese called “Velveeta”.

The Classic Grilled Cheese

I always liked grilled cheese. I learned to make them in a cast iron frying pan. If I placed my bread carefully enough, buttered side down, I could squeeze enough bread into our biggest frying pan to make myself two of them.

Then, about the time I hit high school came a complete grilled cheese game changer, in the form of a JennAire grill my parents had installed in a little pantry room nook off our kitchen. Suddenly, my teenage after school sandwichinista grilled cheese construction capacity doubled. I’d come home after school, pull the block of Velvetta from the frig, crank up that grill, slice a bunch of orange hunks off the block with the cheese slicer, butter eight slices of bread, then make myself four grilled sandwiches, which was just enough to hold me ’til dinner.

Just like bologna, grilled cheese went with everything, ESPECIALLY bologna, which I often fried alongside my bread on that JennAire grill for my after school four sandwich snack.

Two of my other favorite sandwich ingredients during the summer months when my mom had her garden were sliced tomatoes & leaf lettuce, either as stand alone sandwich contents with black pepper & mayonnaise, in combination with each other, or as condiment additions to most every other sandwich concoction mentioned above except PB & J.

“LT Minus the B”

A Summer Garden Special

I never got to eat BLTs unless Mom made them for dinner, because as everyone knows. leftover bacon is a myth.

As time went on, my sandwich creations became more creative. I liked layering different meats, adding dill pickles, onions, lettuce, tomatoes & cheese, different salad dressings, potato chips, even fried eggs.

“The Scooby Doo Special”

It’s been nearly two decades now, since cancer took my jaw & my tongue and I actually ate my last sandwich.

As I sit reminiscing about all the different sandwich combinations I concocted back in the day,

I think that if I had the chance to taste just one more,

I’d give my kingdom

For a PB & J.

**********

Until Our Trails Cross Again:

ADKO