The Fifty-Dollar Sandwich

Mac and Cheese is the ultimate comfort food. Noodles, cheese, some milk, and a little onion. I make mine with a bit of prosciutto, cut up into littlepieces and fried together with the onions. Yum.

I’m a sucker for deli meat to begin with – salami, summer sausage, thuringer,  pastrami, whatever. Give me a sandwich and a beer and I’m happy.

And I especially love prosciutto. What’s better than a dead pig that’s been hanging on a hook in a smoke house for a couple of years? Nothing.

But I didn’t even know what prosciutto was until maybe ten years ago, until one weekend the Nordic Warrior Queen and I were invited to a party at one of her friends’ house.

I had a pretty good idea these guys were loaded before we even went there, but man…there was an Audi, a Lexus, AND a BMW in the driveway of their 5000 square foot house. Their kids wore designer blue jeans. The interior decorating looked like something out of Martha Stewart magazine.

Well, you can be sure they put on an incredible spread: imported beer and wine, jumbo shrimp, caviar, smoked salmon and whitefish, fancy cheeses, fresh fruit, you name it.

And deli meat. I’d had a few beers by then and was feeling pretty smart, and hungry, so I tried a  little of everything, even the caviar  (let me tell you, this crap’s not what it’s cracked up to be).

But what I liked best was the “special” sandwich meat they had off to one side of the table.

It tasted like really good ham to me. Well, I didn’t know what it was, except that I wanted more, so after I finished my plate I went back for seconds. I loaded up a sandwich with a pile of prosciutto the thickness of a double-quarter pounder with cheese.

Later, as I sat on the deck enjoying my new favorite lunchmeat, I heard the guy talking to his wife. “Who ate all the prosciutto?” he asked, acting a bit pissed. As it turns out, it was the most expensive sandwich I’ll ever eat, because he told her it was $50 worth of prosciutto.

I wolfed down what was left of the prosciutto, mayonnaise, and lettuce sandwich and played dumb (it’s not too hard for me), but I think someone clued in the homeowners as to what really happened.   

We were never invited back.