The Cube Theory of Food

 

"Is a hot dog a sandwich?" 

This was the lighthearted question raised as a poll yesterday for the praise team and audio/visual team at church.  It only received two responses, one yes, and one depending on if it had cheese.

My response was no, a hot dog is a taco.  For I subscribe to the cube rule of food. 

Surprisingly, there has been a lot of history and development in this area.  It started with the initial question raised yesterday.  "Is a hot dog a sandwich?"  Apparently, New York state says yes, classifying hot dogs as sandwiches under tax bulletin TB-SB-835.

Then Twitter went a little crazy and decided to declare that Pop Tarts are a sweet form of ravioli.  Pop Tarts corporate denies this, and says that ravioli is just a savory pop tart.

Someone then decided to create a sandwich alignment chart, following the Dungeons and Dragons alignments.  Here based on structure and ingredients as opposed to the lawful/chaotic and good/evil dichotomies.

This is helpful, but still a bit wanting, not quite covering the breadth of food related arguments that could be raised.

Twitter to the rescue again, with the Cube Rule of Food, thanks to user @Phosphatide.  The cube theory of food is a grand unified theory of food categorization based on the number of pieces of bread (or starch) and their location in correlation to other. 

No starch is a salad.

With one piece of starch, the other ingredients are necessarily on top.  This is toast.  Think avocado toast, toast with jelly.  But also under this structure, pizza is toast, nigiri sushi is toast.

Two pieces of starch, parallel to each other makes a sandwich.  This would include the traditional sandwich designed by the Earl himself, as well as quesadillas and stroopwafel.

Three pieces of starch gets us to the hot dog example.  The three pieces would be placed in a u-shape to hold the food.  This makes it a taco.  

Meaning a hot dog is a taco.

Perhaps more controversial for Texas, four pieces of starch (a box with open ends) make sushi.  This means that pigs in a blanket and enchiladas are sushi.

To round out the list, five pieces of starch, creating a bowl shape with an open top, makes a quiche.  This is a correction to the chart above, which has a bread bowl.  This would be an example, but it should be labeled quiche.  This category can also include deep dish pizza and pies.

Finally, six pieces of starch, completely enclosing the ingredients, makes a calzone.  Corn dogs, burritos, chimichangas, dumplings - these are all calzones.  In Texas terms, your klobasniki and kolaches are calzones.

A handy guide to help settle any useless arguments that may be raised.  And a lot of fun silliness to counteract the overbearing muchness of the world right now.  

A hot dog is a taco. 

Why not?

Limerick

A bit of silliness today, to ignore the news of the day for discussion tomorrow.  Today is Limerick Day, celebrating Edward Lear, who made the short poems widespread.  Born on May 12, 1812, he wrote 212 limericks, not all of which follow the strict construction we think of today, but nonetheless helped popularize the short poetry.

To celebrate, I thought I would share a couple.

First a favorite of Lear's.

"There was an Old Man of Peru,
who watched his wife making a stew;
But once by mistake,
In a stove she did bake,
That unfortunate Man of Peru."

And then, the clean version of perhaps the oldest, and most famous American limerick.

"There once was a man from Nantucket

Who kept all his cash in a bucket

But his daughter, named Nan

Ran away with a man

And as for the bucket, Nantucket.

But he followed the pair to Pawtucket,

The man and the girl with the bucket;

And he said to the man,

He was welcome to Nan,

But as for the bucket, Pawtucket.

Then the pair followed Pa to Manhasset,

Where he still held the cash as an asset,

But Nan and the man

Stole the money and ran,

And as for the bucket, Manhasset.

Of this story we hear from Nantucket,

About the mysterious loss of a bucket,

We are sorry for nan,

As well as the man - 

The cash and the bucket, Pawtucket."

Aliens?

Just when you thought 2020 couldn't get any stranger, the Pentagon goes and releases UFO tapes.

Seriously.

I mean, I've liked to believe that there is life out there somewhere.  If not, it would seem like such a waste of such a vast creation.

I would also hope that if there is another creation out there somewhere, that they would have done much better than us.  That they could have avoided the temptations and struggles that we fell so prey to.

But with all that has happened this year, it seems like such a strange turn of events.  I know better than to ask "what next," but it seems pretty inevitable, you know?

I mean, it's been a crazy year, who knows where we go from here.

Maybe, just hopefully, it will be something more light like this.