Sandwiches Redux

I think that Margaret has either inherited her grandfather’s complete lack of tastebuds* or is a culinary innovator of some impressiveness.

We discussed, earlier this week, her penchant for making sandwiches out of pieces of wood.  She has also begun making sandwiches with whatever she finds at hand in other contexts.

And she has, for the past few weeks, had a love affair with oranges.  She prefers clementines, but she’ll eat any orange.  And she’ll ask for it by name.  Previously, her word for orange was “oh-no,” which invested the whole eating process with an air of impending doom.  Recently, however, she has learned to enunciate a little more, and now she asks for an “oranCH.”  So our breakfasts for quite some time have consisted of “oranCHes” and also some bread and butter.  Margaret would be content with just the butter, but I like her to have the bread for the look of the thing.**

Anyway, the other morning, she got inventive.

I can only assume that this is her low(er)-fat, sugar-free version of the classic Nell Gwynn’s Buttered Oranges.  And while I am, of course, impressed that she is innovating classic English dessert recipes***, I’m not sure that Nell Gwynn is an appropriate role model for my daughter.  On the one hand, I would like her to be pioneering and feminist and all those things, so Nell Gwynn’s position as one of the first English actresses is laudable.  On the other hand, I really don’t want her to be the mistress of the King of England. 

On the bright side, she thought that she had made an orange sandwich (or “oranCH sanniCH,” if you prefer the original pronunciation), so perhaps my worries are unfounded.

*Maternal grandfather, and those of you who haven’t eaten things that he cooks may think I’m being needlessly cruel, but those of you who have know that the sort of man who is willing to mix plain yogurt and the leavings from a dill pickle jar, and call it salad dressing, or sauté tuna fish and salsa and make children eat it for breakfast is a man whose tastebuds were clearly shot off in the war.

**On mornings when the butter comes from the fridge, and so is hard, she just peels it off the bread and eats it in chunks.  She then eats the bread, but I still feel there’s something a little off in this performance.  And when the butter is soft, she licks the butter off the bread first, and then eats the bread.

***For those of you who haven’t had this delightful treat, it is essentially an orange-flavored mousse that is made with some butter to replace some of the cream one would use in chocolate mousse.  It’s quite nice, if you ignore the fact that you’re eating orange juice mixed with butter.