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Summer Sammiches: Now, It’s ‘Maters

Move over, hot sausage sammich with peppers and onions. Your season is fading.

It is August. County fair and area festival season is still in full swing. As regular readers know, my fondness (weakness) for hot sausage sammiches with peppers and onions as toppings reaches its diet-busting peak during fair/festival season.

If I find myself at another festival or fair, I shall doubtless munch more hot sausage sammiches, as I did in July with gusto – and considerable messiness; watching me eat such sammiches is not for the fastidious.

But now, the echoes of Creedence Clearwater Revival sound like a clarion call: “Doo doo doo, lookin’ out my back door!”

When I look out my back door, or, better yet, walk out of my back door, why, what to my wondering eyes should appear? Yes, yes; that is a confusing tangle of mixed-up references, bouncing between Creedence and Clement Clark Moore’s Christmas poem. But bear with me….

‘Maters!

Oodles of ‘Maters!

Red, vine-ripened, juicy, sun-warmed ‘Maters, just begging to be gobbled!

And I do.

Resting within an arm’s reach of the back door is a shaker, complete with garlic salt. I grab it. I rush to the ‘Mater plants, 20 of them, in their bucket-like containers, arrayed on the back sidewalk. Cherry ‘Mater here, Roma ‘Mater there, then luscious, chin wetting, beard-softening Big Boy there!

Gulp! Slurp! Chomp!

This is happening when it is only 9 a.m. or so, at the very start of my outdoor chores that include feeding dogs, cats, chickens and – Egad! – Guinea fowl.

Burp. Aah. Much better.

Those snacks are just ‘Maters and salt.

So where do the ‘Mater sammiches come in?

Why, lunch, of course!

An everyday lunch hereabouts includes no sammiches whatever. The gluten in breads worsens the debilitating symptoms inflicted on my wife by Lyme disease. So, most of the time, we have no bread, except perhaps for the nutty brown bread baked by sister-in-law Claire and used by my wife in the meals she prepares for others.

I also do without – usually.

Growing up, bread was as ubiquitous at mealtime as were salt, pepper, butter, peppers and catch-it-up.

But I found it surprisingly easy to do without bread – as long as it was not in the house. Out of sight, out of mind. No longer do I indulge in peener butter and jelly sammiches, though I do scoop spoonfuls of peener butter, the processed, creamy kind, along with raisins or orange slices, as breadless evening snacks.

That suffices.

The hot sausage sammiches, of course, are munched well away from our house. Their encasing buns draw nothing more than my wife’s disapproving tut-tutts. Since fair/festival season is short, she humors me.

Ah, but ‘Mater Sammich season is a month and more long!

It begins anytime from July 4 to now, and lasts until the first killing frosts of, woefully, Labor Day or nearer to Thanksgiving.

‘Mater Sammiches, for me, consist of whole wheat bread, slathered with real mayonnaise (no salad spread for these babies). Sliced ‘Maters are twisted into the mayo, generously salted, and covered with a top slice of mayo-slathered bread.

Slice, grasp, lift, munch, chew, and swallow.

Nirvana. Paradise.

All praise to Montagu! No, not the Shakespearian guy. The Earl guy.

Wikipedia propounds: “The bread-enclosed convenience food known as the “sandwich” is attributed to John Montagu, fourth Earl of Sandwich (1718-1792), a British statesman and notorious profligate and gambler, who is said to be the inventor of this type of food so that he would not have to leave his gaming table to take supper.”

Burp. Aah. Much better.

Where was I? Ah, yes; reaching for the second half of the ‘Mater sammich, and giving glory to Montagu, even though the Brits have horribly mangled the spelling of his earldom. “Sandwich,” indeed! Just try saying “sandwich” with a mouthful of sammich. Can’t be done. The “Maters slip out, or the peppers and onions dribble onto one’s shirt front. That is why I Americanized the spelling and pronunciation: Sammich! Forever more, Sammich!

Where was I? Ah, yes. ‘Maters. The 20 or so potted ‘Mater plants bear sparingly. Their very pottedness impinges on their fecundity.

But, but … half a stone’s throw below the back door lies the main garden itself. Seventy-five ‘Mater plants, in four rows, filling bushels in full ripeningedness.

I am linguistically besotted: pottedness, fecundity, propoundity.

There is one threat: Canning. Seeing ripening garden fruit drives me to ‘Mater sammiches. That same vision drives my wife into a frenzy of canning that leaves our old-fashioned dirt floor cellar bulging with jars.

But canning takes time, lots of time.

I am zippety-quick. I grab ‘Maters, sometimes right out of the bags and buckets awaiting canning.

Out with the mayo, on with the salt, slap the bread slices together.

She frowns.

I giggle.

Sammiches, be they of hot sausage or ‘Maters. God is great. They are good.

Slurp.

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Denny Bonavita is a former editor at newspapers in DuBois and Warren. He lives near Brookville. Email: denny2319@windstream.net

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