A Spark of Memory from a Tomato Sandwich

I read a post on Facebook that concerned the famous southern delight, “the tomato sandwich”. It was simply addressing the fact that it was on every southern menu during the summer. If you’re not from the South, you may not realize it’s possible to make a meal out of tomatoes. But… we can make any meal, breakfast, lunch or dinner with a tomato as its main and only course. The right way to make a tomato sandwich will not appear in any cookbooks, although Southern parents and grandparents know and pass down the recipe generation after generation.

It requires sliced tomatoes grown in your backyard, mayonnaise (Hellmann’s or Duke’s), two slices of bread and salt to taste. You just smear the mayo on the bread, add tomatoes and salt and finish with another mayo soaked slice of bread. If made correctly, the juice from the sandwich will run down your chin and through your hands, like a ripe peach. It is messy, sweet, and tangy and a perfect blend of acidic tomatoes, creamy mayo, soft bread, and salty salt… just right to get that yummy flavor.

And how about that first tomato of the season? It requires a rush to the kitchen to bake up a batch of biscuits. Fresh and hot from the oven and lathered with butter, the biscuit makes a perfect companion for the freshly ripened tomatoes. There is nothing more delicious anywhere… yes, it is definitely a southern tradition.