You’re on a long train journey that lasts several hours, maybe most of the day. You brought simple food with you: slices of bread and slices of cheese, plus some ice tea to drink. Nothing fancy. You don’t count how many slices of either you brought. You don’t even think about it, because train journeys are cool and you’re just chilling out. You just assemble cheese sandwiches one by one, eat them during the trip, and enjoy the ride. Each sandwich uses exactly one slice of bread and one slice of cheese. When one of them runs out, the sandwich-making stops. You arrive at your destination and, naturally, the numbers didn’t line up perfectly. I mean, why would they…
Now you open your bag and discover that something is left over:
• either a few slices of bread with no cheese, or
• a few slices of cheese with no bread.
Which one would be worse? Standing there at the end of the trip, one of these outcomes just feels more annoying than the other, right?
Which leftover would bother you more, and why? Is it purely practical? Emotional? About mess, smell, value, or expectations? Or do you genuinely not care either way? I’m curious how different people experience this.
Bread, unquestionably. Cheese is fantastic on its own. Bread kinda depends on the quality of the bread, but I’d prefer any quality cheese over low-quality bread.
Bread.
Leftover cheese is not tolerated in my house, and is dealt with quickly and mercilessly by whoever is feeling a bit peckish.
But there’s not much one can do with a solo slice of bread outside of adding stuff to it.
Toast.
I don’t eat dry toast with nothing on it
Freak
Then you have the additional challenge of matching the amount of bread to the amount of spreadable butter or peanut butter
Why can’t somebody just enjoy toast
Dry? Plain? Flavorless? Even if you start with good bread with flavor, toasting it takes that flavor away. But I’m not going to judge if you want my toast. Dry, plain, flavorless toast with nothing on it. Enjoy!
Sorry about your taste buds. The maillard reaction absolutely does impart new flavors in addition to those already present.
Bread would be worse because I’m less likely to want to eat just bread. It’s also minimal because why care about bread? I might eat it simply because I don’t want to get up to find a place to dispose of it. If there were extra cheese I’d just eat it
But I reject this scenario: a more realistic and relatable one would be crackers and cheese. It’s also philosophically more of a challenge since crackers are valuable bread
I think it would actually be the opposite because leftover cheese means you could have previously just made a sandwich with extra cheese but now you’re stuck with cheese and no bread. Leftover bread is no big deal because you can just toss it without a care or have some fun feeding wild birds which means it can’t be the worse option.
I eat cheese on its own as a snack regularly. I never eat bread on its own without at least butter on it.
It’s enjoyable to eat cheese on its own so there is no problem here. And I would also have just put the extra cheese on the last piece of bread but it wouldn’t annoy me in anyway. The bread I would just toss unless I was actually hungry, but I’ve been eating cheese and bread all day so I’m not likely to be hungry
Bread is not good for many birds to eat.
This is a silly premise to begin with, but to answer it having an extra piece of bread left is the less desirable option
I’ve personally faced the cracker conundrum before. Leftover brie feels odd, because you shouldn’t just throw it in the fridge and forget about it. If that ever happens, I’m obligated to buy some more crackers the next day.
Leftover crackers are fine though, because they have a long shelf life. Brie doesn’t.
However, you can always put an extra thick layer of brie on a salt cracker to make the numbers match. However, if they’re grossly mismatched, it’s better to have leftover crackers IMO.
Leftover… cheese? I know what each of those words mean individually, but put them together like that and you’ve lost me.
Ok, so am I just supposed to eat the cheese without anything else?
This is such a French coded question
Far preferable to plain bread without cheese.
Do I look like a bird to you?
Yep.
Hello. As a former consumer of cheese, yes.
If it helps, think of it as a very unique form of cocoa-free chocolate, or better, a solid form of yoghurt.
(I developed a dairy intolerance a decade ago. I miss cheese.)
I’m sorry for your loss.
We’re in Germany. There’s always more bread.
Cheese and a slice of sausage is a breakfast. Bread optional.
Yeah who needs those carbs anyway. Protein is where it’s at.
The premise is flawed. I would not only count them properly in the first place, but continue to keep tabs whilst I supped, and adjust ratios as necessary in order to avoid unpaired leftovers.
I wouldn’t pre-count, but I cannot conceive of a world where I wouldn’t be adjusting the ratios for the last few slices once the discrepancy was obvious.
This is acceptable. It also indicates that you make a solid guess at the beginning.
Having not scanned your history, are you German? That sounds like something a German would say.
No, but I’ve been mistaken for one before. Und Ich sprech ein bißchen Deutsch.
That is a valid approach too.
I’d rather have cheese if I’m on a train and don’t need carbs for fuel. If I was riding a bike, I might feel differently.
If there’s a disparity in your bread/cheese supply, you could stretch it out by only eating one slice of bread at a time, folding it over a whole piece of cheese (also folded).
If I keep track of the quantities, I could definitely make the numbers match in the end. That’s probably a better approach than my “just wing it” style.
It seems improbable that you would get down to just a few pieces of bread and cheese and not notice the disparity unless you have some magic sack containing bread and cheese without the ability to see inside like some monkey’s paw wish.
By the time you notice, the disparity already has grown to such an extent that compensating for it becomes hard.
Eh, you can eyeball it towards the end: Nothing wrong with improvising if you ask me.
I knew someone would figure it out. Top tier detective skill!
Yeah.
I sure love to eat rye bread.
My wife no so much Of me Eating it Before bedtime
Leftover broad is worse. Leftover cheese is edible on its own.
100% this; cheese on its own is always a wonderful snack.
Neither is a problem, leftover cheese will just get eaten as a snack if it’s not enough to keep until I go to the shop next (I usually go every other day for something since it’s a 2 min walk)
Leftover bread just becomes a piece of toast with some butter (I basically always have it in, and get the replacement before I totally run out). Tbh with a coffee that’s just my normal breakfast some days anyway
You always have a toaster and butter on the train?
I’ve gotta be honest I somehow missed the entire context added to the body, but OP gave a good answer anyway
I screwed up the original post. It went to a pretty quiet community, and I tried to fix that by cross posting it here, but I screwed up that as well. Initially, it was just a title and a picture, with no extra details. As soon as I realized that, I quickly copied the original body here as well. However, many people had already replied by then. Oh well…
No need, if you have a normal kitchen at the destination.
When I’m at the deli, I tend to order by the slice so that I have exactly the right amount of everything for the sandwiches I plan to make.
Ultimately, I wouldn’t blindly throw cheese and bread in a bag to bring along on a trip. I would only count out the exact amounts I need. However, if I made a mistake and there was an imbalance, it would not be an issue because I have no problem eating either bread or cheese on its own.
I am realizing right now that my daughter would consider all of that to be evidence of autism. Which I still deny because I have not been diagnosed as being on the spectrum. In my opinion, it’s just rational sandwich planning.
Ha ha, my wife accused me of that as well, because of this exact scenario.
…. But eating sandwiches is very predictable: why wouldn’t you order exactly the slices you need for a week?
I don’t understand: leftover cheese? I always use exactly as much as I have at home.
What happens when you run out of bread, but you still have some cheese? Do you just eat all of it without adding anything to it?
The last slice of bread gets a special treat. A layer of cheese thicker than the bread itself!
LOL. Yeah that should work too.
Bread. Cheese never makes it
How can leftovers be annoying? They’re food and you have them in case you get hungry.
Together, they’re awesome, but one missing is a bit disappointing. There’s clearly a synergy between these ingredients, like peanut paired with chocolate. Each flavour is individually just fine, but together they create something far superior. Being forced to settle for fine is just disappointing when the memory of something far nicer is still fresh in your mind.
You guys get bread and cheese?
