h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

While, of course, you should use a good bread for your sandwiches, I would contend that the filling is the main thing.

Whatever the filling, I find that the following helps to make a sandwich tea an enjoyable and luxurious feast:

1. Before you start work on the food, write labels - it helps both with getting the proportions right and people can choose their sandwich without fingering through them all. By "getting the proportions right" I mean that you can work out in advance e.g. how many cheese, how many ham and how many egg sandwiches you are going to make and vary the accompaniments (tomato, mayo, pickle...) so that you get a balanced mix.

1a. For a picnic you can prepare bags or sheets of greaseproof paper with the ingredients, to be filled accordingly.
1b. For the table, cut up a sheet of paper and make little flags on cocktail sticks. Believe me, it sounds twee, but it's worth the effort.

2. Use firm bread which will keep its shape and hold even a slightly moist filling in for a few hours. For a large picnic or tea table, use a variety of breads.

3. Cut the bread thin. This makes for an elegant sandwich, even if you do put lashings of filling in. The bread is basically just an edible container for the food inside, IMHO. Unfortunately, you don't seem to be able to get thin-cut bread in the supermarkets these days (medium-thick-doorstep and then some, but not thinner). In Germany, most kitchens have a bread-slicer, so I have no problem cutting a loaf into thin, even slices. For how to do it by hand, read "Mostly Harmless".

4. Spread the butter quite thick and RIGHT OUT TO THE EDGES.

5. Grate or chop any large or hard fillings. Grated cheese, held together with pickle, HP sauce or mayonnaise, tastes better than a slab of hard Dutch or Swiss cheese. This also prevents embarrassing bits of food all coming out at once and dangling from the eater's mouth, or from the sandwich and flapping brown sauce on shirt fronts.

6. A mixture of consistencies and food groups (Bacon, lettuce & tomato being a good example) should make up the filling. Three ingredients is the ideal number. One of these will usually be the usual lettuce leaf, which can be torn into small, bite-size pieces - see point 4 above.

7. Find a large bread board and cut the bread, then butter it, stacking it on the side ready for filling (one slice butter up, one slice butter down) I have to make three stacks - there's the anti-butter brigade, some of whom want margarine and some who want nothing at all. The large bread board makes life easier when you spread them all out in front of you ready for filling.

8. A chain gang is a good idea for filling and labelling the sandwiches. It certainly helps if there are at least two of you doing it, because you get messy fingers filling the sandwiches but you need dry hands to put them in the bags/arrange them on the plates.

I think I've rambled on enough about this. I wish I could invite you all to tea!

My favourite sandwich is something like crabmeat with mayo or thousand islands sauce. But for every day, cheddar and Branston pickle on a granary loaf is ideal.

>>>I wish I could invite you all to tea!

Reading this has made my belly grumble. Is it lunchtime yet?

It is here - we're an hour ahead!

Right I'm off to lunch then

Three days on and he hasn't returned.