Chocolate Sandwiches

Back before Jacob was even three, there was this one Saturday where I popped into Flower Flour to pick-up a picnic lunch.  Honestly, I was craving their pancake salad which is unbelievable.  Yes, pancake salad.  I’d almost completely forgotten about this particular picnic except that of course, Jakey remembers it like it was yesterday.  “Mama, remember that time you bought me a chocolate sandwich?”

“Vaguely…”

So the reason I bought a chocolate sandwich was because they didn’t have any kid-friendly peanut butter sandwich-type options, everyone was waiting for me in the car, and basically, I was desperate.  After scouring the options, the lady says hopefully, “Nutella?”

And of course now the grilled Nutella sandwich will go down in history as the best sandwich I ever made the mistake of buying.  Which isn’t exactly the same kind of history-making sandwich as the leftover salmon sandwich my dad made me in seventh grade…

I was reminded of chocolate sandwiches during our recent adventure in Los Angeles.  Also the name of Jake’s “new” wife, by the way.  So I had my week-long work meeting in downtown LA and it went swimmingly.  Then all the boys joined me for a long weekend where we swam our way across SoCal.

First we dominated the pool at LA LIVE during BET weekend.  Tormenting Beyonce fans with our speedy and difficult to control motorized orange squid.  Then we hit the Verdugo pool in Burbank, aka little kid water playground heaven.  Unless maybe you’re Nate and then it’s, “Too deep.  For me!”  But then again, everything is currently, “Too sunny.  For me.  Too hard.  For me.  Too (s)picy.  For me.”

After the most delicious and relaxing dinner in the Kellums backyard where Jake and Jack ate all the visible strawberries, and a short but sweet visit with Emily, we swam our way to Pasadena with two-day-old Baby Eve(!) and the rest of the Hampton family.  Yes, Baby Eve and Eleanor are insanely darling and I pray the boys’ wrestling, roaring, and turtle handling left Evie unscathed.

And where am I going with this?  Good question….  Oh, right: chocolate sandwiches.

In Pasadena we stayed in a grand hotel called The Langham which had a lot of crystal vases and burnished leather reading nooks and of course, afternoon high tea.  Now what does James Patrick the lover of British accents and June birthday boy love more than sandwiches, cookies, and other delicacies?  You guessed it: chocolate.  And on Sunday afternoons The Langham presents their afternoon chocolate high tea, complete with giant chocolate fountain.

We’re totally going.

So we change out of our swimsuits into something slightly more presentable and make our way to a little upholstered settee and glass-topped table completely covered in fine china, silver, and crystal glassware.  The rest of the tables were occupied by baby showers and ladies in sundresses.  I brought three Crayons and a couple of pieces of hotel note paper.  This is really an opportunity for us to teach table manners and good behavior and polite conversation, right?

Five minutes in, Jakey and Daddy return to the table with the first course: serve-yourself bites on sharp skewers bathed in a pond of chocolate from the 4-story fountain.  Did I really wear white pants?

We made it through course one with only a few drips on Jake’s shirt.  I’m positive that one chocolate stain on the yellow settee was there when we sat down.  Then the lady tells us she can bring kid-friendly tea sandwiches, but then we find out the non-kid-friendly tea sandwiches involve smoked salmon and shrimp, which is actually kid-friendly in our family so we stick with that.

We wolf down cucumber sandwiches and chocolate eclairs and little chocolate macaroons and mini tarts and the boys add sugar cubes and cream to our tea and we guzzle champagne and… it is awesome.  We even got several compliments on how well the little ruffians behaved and there was no broken china or puddles of chocolatey carpet when we left.  Just a handful of balled-up chocolatey wipes.

As expected, the smoked salmon finger sandwiches were a hit.  They had a white chocolate spread which doesn’t sound that great but… it worked.

And so my dad’s inspired seventh grade salmon sandwich mistake and my grilled chocolate sandwich mistake came together in perfect harmony…

I guess two wrongs do make a right.