I love cucumber sandwiches, as I’ve stated before, but I do have a couple small gripes with them. The first is the daintiness and the second is that, in their original carnation, they were intended as a polite snack; whereas, I’d like to re-fit them slightly for lunchtime consumption.

My first attempt at un-civilizing the cucumber sandwich was a tangy blend of cream cheese, green onions, cucumbers, and spices smushed between an everything bagel. This was in the Spring time when running along the Charles didn’t feel quite so much like crossing the River Styx into Hades, temperatures were cooler, and appetites more robust.

Ever since my dear friend, and super hostess, CS, served cucumber sandwiches at a summer party, I have been simultaneously obsessed with and repulsed by them. In spirit, their crustlessness makes them all daintiness, pinky-finger-up, civilized-to-the-point-of-oppression madness. In taste and texture, they are velvety smooth and crisp – all refreshment and succor.

Thus, I decided to ‘un-civilize’ my cucumber sandwiches, and make them something that those of us who live in the urban jungle could truly feast on.

A few years back, I had made the foolish habit of buying lunch every day at work; a group of us had become close friends, and I felt worthy, neigh, entitled, to splurge on eating out in order to spend the quality time with friends and break up the work day. I estimate that in one year I spent ~$2000 ‘splurging’ on going out for lunch, rather than brown-bagging it, which is just a little nauseating, given our current recession.

There seems to be some sort of distastefulness associated with brown-bagging-it, and I can’t quite put my finger on what it is – it’s part hassle, part belief that the food won’t taste as good, and part perceived image and social opportunity in a work setting. I understand the reluctance, as I felt it myself, but those qualms disappeared when I started making my own lunches and realized the following: I make a better sandwich, with fresher, more interesting ingredients for a third of the cost of the local cafe.