A muff by any other name....

This is an entry from our dear friend, Whitney Hansen. This was originally posted on the UTA website.

Muffuletta sandwich 1906 Central Grocery New Orleans The tart smell of olives and lemon juice to me meant the long days of endless summer heat had arrived and that it was time to escape Arlington, Texas for a cooler destination. Signaling the rapid approach of a spontaneous trip to scenic Lake Ouachita, Arkansas, or any town nestled in the valleys of the southern Rocky Mountains, my parents would spend one night furiously assembling olives, cheese, lemon juice, peppers, and olive oil in vats of large plastic bowls. Affixed with sentiments verging on giddiness at the prospect of vacation, the tangy smells of marinating Muffuletta permeated throughout the entire house, aided of course by the overworked air conditioner on a hot August night. Eventually my sister and I would be compelled to join in on the festivities occurring in the kitchen and spend the next hour or so packing the marinated olives and veggies into slender glass jars not realizing at the time that we too were about to be packed into a different kind of jar. This jar of course would be our parents’ old Chevy Suburban, and we would be sharing it with coolers, luggage, books, cd players, and any number of combinations of childhood friends, due to the fact that we always traveled with at least two other families. One could almost say that the success of the entire trip depended on this critical night of cooking because relying on McDonald’s or Taco Bell entirely for sustenance on the road was simply out of the question. Our recipe for Muffuletta came from the loving cooking tradition of my father’s parents where they discovered the savory goodness of the sandwich in their New Orleans Church community. How then, could a fast food chain compete with two generations of parental care for the nourishment of our band of adventurers? It couldn’t, but Muffuletta could because one mouth watering bite of the colorful olive mix and I could hear my Nana’s sweet Southern accent telling me about the church potluck where she first had it, or I could see the bright smiles on my mom and dad’s faces as they worked on juicing the fifteen lemons that it takes to make Muffuletta. I wasn’t the only one who felt this connection too. A little olive filled sandwich would almost always incite questions from my parents’ friends pertaining to the well-being of my Nana and Pop Pop, or instigate amusing stories from previous vacations. So there it was, a simple recipe transformed into an event where adventure, comfort, and history melted together under a hot broiler, or between two cold buns to form my favorite sandwich of all time.