As I wrote elsewhere, a short time ago I visited a Jersey Mike’s sub-shop where I40 and NC24 intersect. There are quite a few fast food businesses located here… Smithfield’s, Wendy’s, Jersey MIke’s, etc. There was a KFC, but it has been closed for about a year, I think, maybe more, but the building has finally been boarded up.

So, my first visit was after 8 pm, and they close at 9 pm. But, I wasn’t rushed, but ordered, answered the sandwich maker… “Mike’s Way” includes everything… lettuce, tomato, dressing, etc.

I think I got a bag of some type of chips, a drink, and then sat down to eat my sandwich looking out the front windows. I think there were two female customers who had come in shortly after I did, and seems another woman that must have phoned in her order and left shortly with a bag, her order.

The sandwich was good. I liked the sweet vinegar dressing. *The experience was good enough that I attempted to repeat it at home. Not quite as good at home.

But, earlier this week I bought a couple of rolls & a blueberry bagel at Wegman’s in Cary/Mooresville. One of the rolls was a Portuguese roll which looked like a short sandwich roll.

So Wegman’s was out of their Cranberry Bagels, and I got a Blueberry Bagel. I like blueberry, but my favorite bagel from Wegman’s is cranberry. I also bought a Miami Onion Roll and a half loaf of Seeded Rye Bread.

I bought the Rye Bread with the intent of making Pastrami Rachels (Ruben with Pastrami instead of Corned Beef) at home again. I also bought some Pastrami and Swiss cheese and later sauerkraut. I made some homemade Thousand Dressing, which is simple to make and tastes much better than store-bought. The Pastrami Rachels were very good. I was able to make three of them using one slice of rye bread each time, and also eating a slice or two of spicy dill pickles. Three slices of Pastrami for each sandwich made a fat sandwich.

So, I got around to fixing my Jersey Mike’s “Like” sandwich today. I knew I had to do it soon because the bread was beginning to get hard. I sliced it in half, and then put it in the microwave for about 20 seconds.

But, here is the trick that worked really well. I shredded the ice berg lettuce, enough for about two sandwiches, and put it in Tupperware container. I also chopped up some Vidalia onion and put that in the container. I added some Red Wine vinegar, sweetener, coconut sugar, celery seeds, garlic powder, marjoram, basil & oregano. I put on the container lid and shook this all together. I figured that I would get better coating of the vinegar dressing this way, and I did. *Also, I found that I hadn’t put enough of the lettuce/onion mixture on my sandwich so I went and got some more and put it on the plate. It was much more enjoyable to eat a bite of the sandwich and take some lettuce mixture in my fingers. Messier, but delicious!

Oh, forgot that I sliced a small Campari tomato and put that on top of the meat. I used the Deli-Sliced Honey Ham and Honey Turkey along with several slices of the Estonskaya from Golden Hex.

ADDENDUM [09/10/23]: I normally shop at the WalMart located on Ramsey St. when I do my WalMart shopping. They have had consistently good sweet corn on the cob this year, although they ran out a week or so ago. I usually buy my supply of Splenda, and the Pomegranate Lemonade & Sweet Tea flavor packets, and Chopped Clams here also. But because they didn’t have corn the last time I was there, and they were out of one of the types of flavor packets also, I decided to visit the WalMart nearer the Mall, and Cracker Barrel.

I walk into the side of WalMart that has their groceries. I believe that it was an oriental lady that was leaving that forced her empty shopping cart on me. As you go through the gate, their baked bread section is immediately on the right. And, to my surprise, right on the corner was a good looking loaf of Seeded Rye bread. And also, near the rye bread was a good looking 2-pack of “bake at home” baguettes. I did not note the “bake at home” notation on the package because the two baguettes looked perfectly baked for the purpose of using them as Hoagie rolls. Made a deli sandwich at home later, and still did not note the “bake at home” posting on the plastic wrapper. Even had to go to the trash to temporarily retrieve the bread wrapper to verify, “Yep, Bake at Home!” The bread was good for sandwiches without any further baking, and I even sliced a couple of small slices to verify that eating them that way was OK. OK.

Oh, almost forgot, I think the price for the two baguettes was only $1.98 plus tax. That is an excellent price for two loaves of bread, even if you do need to finish baking them at home.

NOTE: I know it looks like I am enamoured of food, and taking pictures of bread in WalMart might be strong evidence for this, but I’m also currently using an app on my phone to track and visit the small neighborhood “lending libraries” (book depositories on poles in various neighborhoods). I bought about 15 books at the recent Cumberland County Library Book Sale. Paid 20 to 25 cents for each book. I didn’t even visit the adult room where most of the books were located. I went to the first little room, which had children’s books, and while there looked behind me to see that they also had a cookbook section. The majority of books were for children, although I did buy a book about potatoes, about soup, about pasta, about Scandanavian Seasonal cooking and something else, that I currently do not recall.

So, I’ve already distributed most of the books I bought at the sale, and I am trying to religiously adhere to the take 2 leave 2 books at each location. I see my tendency is to take one and leave two, but then I won’t have anything to leave in a relative short time. I try to take a picture of the little book house at each location, and then I take a picture of the two books that I have taken. I’m thinking that I can reference these photos so that I don’t have to bring a book back to the same location from which I took it.

There is a neighborhood that I regularly drive through, and I was impressed by the quality of the books in that little box. I even felt a little guilty that I had nothing of the same quality to leave. *And to whom do I leave the book about pigs? Oh, and I also try to read at least a portion of each book that I take. I did get a nice pop-up version of Green Eggs and Ham.

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Now while my old schoolmates (and I think about Agatha Christie, as I use the compound word, “schoolmates”) are actually visiting far away places like Iceland and Las Vegas, I am living vicariously by tracking various cargo ships (of different sizes) as they travel about the world picking up, transporting and off loading their various cargoes. The BBC Volga started this cargo ship fettish last November, a few days before Thanksgiving. Saw her coming into the Port of Morehead City, and used an app on my phone to find her name. *Never would have thought it, but since that time, and it is only 10 months currently, she has circumnavigated the Earth completely, from west to east, starting in Shanghai, CN. During that time she went through both the Panama Canal and the Suez Canal, in both directions, and even the Kiel (DE) Canal in one direction. She has visited the Port of Morehead City twice during that time.

Now if you could get off the ship, at each port, for a few days and tour each port, that might be an interesting life, but I don’t think these officers & seamen get to do that… and that would very quickly become BORING! Still, for me, each new port gives me the opportunity to use Google Maps & StreetView when available to get to know each city or town better. And, finding a restaurant or two that have web sites, with a gallery of photos, and exotic menus becomes quite informative and educational. And, I am still learning German, almost every day. I see something on a menu that looks interesting, but there are no online photos from the restaurant web site. I just copy & paste the short description from the menu, especially in the foreign language, and viola, there are a myriad of photos for these dishes. Yes, some are not exactly as advertised in the menu, but what ideas. Or I think to visit an Aldis or Lidl online and peruse their weekly specials… or even a non-chain local grocer that has an online presence. Zutat, suss Senf, Schweinshaxe, Topf, etc.

Or for Tynemouth and Newcastle, UK where the BBC Volga is currently located… I can ride down various streets and see similar views that were recorded previously. I visit a couple of restaurant sites. I see a large parking lot for brand new autos fresh off the ROROs, and I get a better understanding of the area. I am familiar with Brunswick, GA, and even came across a YouTube video regarding a RoRo from down that that capsized with the entire vessel and about 4K autos all destroyed.

And, there are excellent web cam views at Southampton, UK, Gdansk, PL and the Panama & Kiel Canals.

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And my latest interest besides playing several games of Chess online each day, and solving their daily chess puzzles, includes actually reading the Agatha Christie novel, “And Then There Were None.” This is one of my favorite stories and I’ve seen about 4 versions (one even set in the desert with Donald Pleasance). And surprisingly, there is quite a bit of “leeway” taken by these story presenters. Not everyone dies in the end… or some of the characters don’t make the same fatal decisions, or have the same love interests from version to version. And I believe I’ve even read where Agatha Christie actually changed the ending, “during her day” because her audience didn’t like her original ending. *Still, the first time surprise where “the bitch just shot and killed him” instead of “fooling the judge into thinking he had won” and the two walking away at the end, instead of the one just hanging around (Ha, Ha!) was interesting.

Oh, but I found several copies of this novel online. But, the author seems to atrociously jam words together, incorrectly, instead of hyphenating or dividing them entirely as they should be. So much so, that I’ve even taken to re-writing (just punctuation, and spaces, and maybe a few spellings) the text version I found online. She heads chapters with numbers 2, 3, 4 etc., but within each chapter there are sections with Roman Numerals, III, IV, VI…

Oh and as I am re-formatting this story, it looks to me as if Agatha Christie was writing this story with the stage or a movie in mind. In fact very little re-writing would need to be done to get a TV script ready. *Okay, I don’t actually know what a finished TV/Movie script would look like, but I have some idea.