Eponymous Foods – Sandwiches Edition - Stuff You Missed in History Class

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly Frye.

Speaker 2 (00:14):
And I'm Tracy V. Wilson.

Speaker 1 (00:16):
So I was traveling with some friends recently, and while
some of us were chatting one evening, one of them
mentioned that they really liked the eponymous foods episodes and
they were like, it has been a minute since you
did one, and I was like, okay, So here we
are today. We're going to talk about sandwiches. So get
ready to maybe get hungry, depending on what your feelings

(00:39):
are right on what you like any of these sandwiches.
We're covering three sandwiches. The first is one I do
not like, the second sandwich I love, and the third
is my favorite sandwich of all time. It goes in
the Holly Fry Sandwich Hall of Fame as the best one.
So we're starting with Sloppy Joe's. Those are very popular

(01:01):
in the United States for some reason, which probably reveals
my feeling about Sloppy Joe's. We share an opinion on
Sloppy joe We could talk about it Friday. There are
contested origin stories about this dish being invented here in
the US, but one version places its origin outside the
United States. This is a sandwich that, as its name suggests,

(01:24):
is messy by nature. It typically features ground beef mixed
with some kind of a tomato sauce, and then that
mix is usually served on a hamburger bun. And there
are lots of variations and way to improvise with this.

Speaker 2 (01:39):
Seasons can change up the.

Speaker 1 (01:40):
Flavor a lot, and some folks like to add things
like onion or other minced vegetables. And three different places
claim the sloppy joe as their own. There's Sioux City, Iowa,
Key West, Florida, and Havana, Cuba. There's also a New
Jersey honorable mention that we will talk about. Yeah, that's

(02:00):
not incidentally the order we're going to talk about them in.
But it makes sense that the sloppy Joe pops up
in the United States in cooking in the nineteen thirties
because this was a time when money was very tight.
As a consequence, expensive ingredients like meat had to be stretched.
So meat loaf had been around since the late eighteen hundreds,

(02:21):
but the need to find ways to make protein sources
go farther in the nineteen thirties during the depression, led
both restaurateurs and home cooks to get a little bit
creative with ingredients mixed into meat to fillip hungry stomachs.
This also harkens back to our episode on Augusta Scofie,
who similarly found ways to stretch available ingredients in the

(02:43):
field when he was an army cook and then when
he was a chef during World War One and had
to figure out how to run his luxury kitchen at
the Savway Hotel in London without things like butter. We're
going to start with the non US origin story for
the Sloppy Joe, though, because it informs one of the
other this starts not with a man named Joe, but
rather Jose. Jose abili Otero was born in Spain in

(03:08):
eighteen hundreds. He moved to Cuba in nineteen oh four
and started working as a bartender in Havana. He worked
there for three years and then moved to New Orleans, Louisiana,
once again found.

Speaker 2 (03:20):
Work at a bar.

Speaker 1 (03:21):
Right around nineteen thirteen, he moved south again to Miami, Florida,
worked in a variety of establishments until nineteen eighteen, and
then back to Cuba. After working for a bar and
cafe in Havana called the Greasy Spoon for a few months,
Jose decided he would rather work for himself than someone else,
so he bought a grocery store that also had a

(03:42):
cafe and bar. That's a pretty standard setup, and according
to Jose's accounts, when one of his friends from the
US came to visit him in his new establishment, that
friend said, quote, why Joe, this place is certainly sloppy.
Look at the filthy water running from under the counter.
And from then on he was known as Sloppy Joe.
He seemed to embrace the idea of being known for

(04:05):
having a messy business, so much so that he renamed
the place Sloppy Joe's. In case you, like me, are
wondering where that gross water was coming from, it was
melting ice. Jose served a variety of seafood items in
his grocery. He had fresh seafood set out on ice,
and as that seafood ice melted, it slushed to the
floor and made kind of a mess. In nineteen thirty two,

(04:28):
the Havana Sloppy Joe's Bar released a cocktails manual so
that people could make the drinks from their cocktail menu
at home, and in that manual there is a brief
biography of Jose Abielioterro, who is shown in a photograph
portrait at the front of the book with the nickname
Sloppy Joe written under it. In the years of operation
of Sloppy Joe's, Jose added a lot of touches to

(04:51):
the place, including famously a sixty foot long bar. Early
in the Sloppy Joe establishment's history there was a sand
which called a Sloppy Joe on the menu, and this
was apparently a carry around version of either roba vieha
or piccadillo. Rope a vieha is made with shredded meats, tomato, sauce,

(05:12):
and various spices. Usually this is something you would eat
with a fork, but Jose put it on bread. Piccadillo
is a similar dish made with a ground beef, although
it often has a lot of other ingredients, but if
you put it on bread or a bun, does kind
of sound like the Sloppy Joe sandwich. And a lot
of people from the US started visiting Havana during prohibition

(05:35):
so they could get a drink and enjoy the climate,
and there were often celebrities lined up along that sixty
foot bar. One famous figure who loved Sloppy Joe's Bar
and sandwich was Ernest Hemingway, so much so that he
figured into the Key West version of the sandwich origin story.
When Hemingway was in Key West he lived there for

(05:58):
I think a dozen years, he convinced another bar, the
Silver Slipper, to rename itself Sloppy Joe's and put the
sandwich on the menu. The Silver Slipper was owned by
a man named Joe Russell, so the name Sloppy Joe
kind of fit again for someone who is cool with
being called sloppy, and he went for the idea. Joe
Russell had also been to Havana with Hemingway on a

(06:19):
number of trips, so it wasn't as though the author
had to explain to Joe Russell who Sloppy Joe was
or what a Sloppy Joe's Sandwich was. Russell seems to
have pretty readily understood the appeal of both of these things,
and that informed his decision to change his establishment's name.
The Key West Sloppy Joe's did not really claim to

(06:40):
have invented the sandwich exactly. It still acknowledged the Cuban origins,
but it did claim to have perfected it, inventing the
American version. You can find out for yourself if you're
ever in the area, because it is still open and
the sloppy Joe sandwich is still on the menu, so
you can decide if you think that's perfect or not.

(07:00):
The third contender for the invention of the sloppy Joe
is a diner cook named Joe. This is the version
that's associated with Sioux City, Iowa, at the Old Tavern Inn.
This version has roots in another Midwest sandwich called the
loose meat sandwich. And this is kind of like a
burger in that it's made with ground beef or chopped meat,

(07:21):
but it's not formed into a patty.

Speaker 2 (07:24):
And the cook named Joe. None of the Sioux.

Speaker 1 (07:26):
City stories that Holly found included a last name, added tomato, sauce,
and some spices, and in what sometimes gets called a
tavern sandwich. Joe's creation became very popular with locals and
its reputation spread. Yeah, there are still places that will
call a sloppy Joe a tavern sandwich.

Speaker 2 (07:46):
In the Midwest.

Speaker 1 (07:48):
So the location that we're going to offer as an
honorable mention in this is town Hall Deli in Maplewood,
New Jersey. Apparently in the nineteen thirties, the mayor of
Maplewood visited the Havana Sloppy Joe's and had the sandwich
there and then asked the owner of the town Hall
Deli to make it based on his description. That version,

(08:08):
according to the Townhall Deli website, featured quote coleslaw ham
cow tongue, Swiss cheese with lots of dressing, and was
served on thin rye bread. That doesn't really sound very
much like a Sloppy Joe or Ropa vieha or piccadillo.
Town Hall Deli still exists. It has a variety of

(08:28):
what they call Sloppy Jo's on the menu, although to
me they all sounded more like sliced meat deli sandwiches
than a sauteed ground meat cooked with a tomato sauce.
So which of these stories is the real one? Maybe
all of them. It's completely possible that different people had
a similar idea around the same time, And there's also

(08:49):
a secondary aspect of the Sloppy Joe story and that's
the idea of canned sauce and convenience foods. For a
lot of home cooks in the post World War two
United States, products like Sloppy Jo sauce offered a shortcut
to making tomato sauce from scratch, while also being malleable
enough to doctor up into a more unique recipe. ConAgra

(09:11):
Foods and Hunts introduced the Manwich canned Sloppy Jo sauce
in nineteen sixty nine. It's pretty easy to find write
ups of papers in the nineteen seventies about how home
cooks might use sloppy Jo sauce. One from the Sacramento
Bee that ran on December sixteenth, nineteen seventy reads and
our apologies here to Italian listeners quote. A passport is

(09:35):
not needed to bring a profusion of Italian inspired foods
to your family table. A ready assistant is the new
canned Sloppy Jo pizza, sauce and beef, which lends itself
easily to spooning on burger buns, topping spaghetti, or making
a fast version of lasagna. The write up goes on
to share a recipe called Presto Lasagna was made with

(09:58):
sloppy jo sauce and cottage cheese. I have feelings schools
have often included Sloppy Joe's in cafeterias for the reason
we mentioned earlier. It's cost effective and it enables kitchens
to serve more meals with less meat. I also read
one note where someone had interviewed someone who was in

(10:19):
charge of decisions, such as, you know what gets served
in a school cafeteria, and she was like, we also
sneak vegetables in there, and the kids don't know, which
I think a lot of parents do as well, So
perhaps the nostalgia of meals like this eton as a
kid has contributed to the survival of the.

Speaker 2 (10:37):
Sloppy Joe over the decades.

Speaker 1 (10:39):
The Havana Slappy Joe's Bar closed in the nineteen sixties
during the Castro regime, but in two thousand and seven
the Office of the Historian of Havana started a restoration
of this fabled watering hole as part of a larger
effort to restore Havana's old city, and after six years
of work, it reopened in twenty thirteen.

Speaker 2 (10:59):
Now you can visit if you are in.

Speaker 1 (11:00):
Cuba, and I will talk about it on the behind
the scenes because I have some quizzical dog question marks
about reviews of it. We are coming up on National
Sloppy Joe Day. If you're in the US, it's March eighteen,
So if you love them, go ahead and start making
your plans. In the meantime, we're gonna pause for a
sponsor break, and when we're back, we will talk about
a sandwich with a Kentucky origin story. If you have

(11:33):
never had a sandwich called a hot brown, you are
in for a rich savor retreat. It's an open faced
sandwich that's piled with roast turkey, bacon, pimentos or tomatoes,
and mornaise sauce. Mornaise sauce is our good friend beschamel,
but with Parmesan, romano or greere cheese added to it,
or sometimes combinations of those cheeses. Occasionally you might find

(11:55):
other cheeses blended in, depending on who makes it. And
once that sauce has spread a across the top of
the sandwich, the whole thing is broiled so the cheese
gets bubbly, and then it served.

Speaker 2 (12:05):
As the name.

Speaker 1 (12:05):
Indicates, hot, it is sometimes described as similar to Welsh
rare bit, although the main similarity is really just that
it's open faced and broiled, because there isn't a whole
lot of overlapping ingredients. Beyond that, the cheeses are different.
The hot Brown is named for the hotel where it
was invented, which was named for the businessman who built it.

(12:26):
That's James Graham Brown. Brown was born in eighteen eighty
one in Madison, Indiana. He attended public school, then went
to Hanover College and Purdue University. The Brown family moved
to Kentucky in nineteen oh three, and as a young man,
Brown went to work with his father in the lumber business.
Their eastern Kentucky operation grew over time, and at thirty seven,

(12:49):
Brown became the president of W. P. Brown and Sons
Lumber Company. Lumber was not the only business that Brown
worked in, and over the years he became one of
lieu of the Kentucky's most prominent businessmen, particularly through the
many construction projects named for him. In nineteen twenty three,
he built the Brown Hotel over the course of ten

(13:10):
months at a cost of four million dollars on the
corner of Fourth and Broadway. He was inspired in this
project by another Louisville hotel's success that was the Seal Box,
and Brown thought he could challenge the Sealbox dominance as
the luxury o hotel of downtown, and he was right.
The style of the Brown Hotel is Georgian revival. It

(13:32):
had sixteen floors and it opened on October twenty fifth,
nineteen twenty three. British Prime Minister David Lloyd George was
the first person to sign the guest register. The Brown
Hotel quickly became the center of Louisville's social and cultural scene,
and Jay Graham Brown expanded his downtown presence by also
building a theater nearby. Eventually they also erected a medical

(13:56):
facility and an office building and a church. Since Brown
lived in the hotel, he'd essentially built everything that he
could need within walking distance. At night, in the hotel ballroom,
a band would play dinner dances from ten pm to
one am for the late night crowd, and often there
were more than one thousand people there on any givena evening.

(14:18):
This also is where the hot Brown was born. So
after the late night dancers had been entertained for a
couple of hours, the band would take a break, typically
right around midnight, and The hotel restaurants also stayed open late,
so the party crowd would saunter into those to order
a snack before the last set of the evening was played.
This was a very popular cycle of entertainment, and it

(14:41):
brought the hotel a lot of business in food sales
for a while. After a few years, the sameness of
the way the dance evenings that the Brown Hotel played
out left the city's nightlighte a little boared, so business
started to wane.

Speaker 2 (14:57):
There were a couple of versions of how the hot Brown.

Speaker 1 (15:00):
Sandwich was invented in this moment of lag in nineteen
twenty six and what led to its creation. One is
that there was concern about guests having grown tired of
the menu, so the need was seen for something new.
Another is that the executive chef, Fred Schmidt, was just
tired of sending out plates of club sandwiches and scrambled

(15:23):
eggs and ham to his late night diners and wanted
to make something new. Seems possible or even likely that
both of these were factors.

Speaker 2 (15:33):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (15:34):
If you read accounts by people that were involved in
the whole thing, some of them put it one way
and some put it the other.

Speaker 2 (15:39):
And I think probably both are the case.

Speaker 1 (15:41):
The choices of ingredients for the sandwich were informed, according
to legend, by time of year. It was winter, which
meant that the hotel had turkey on hand because of
holiday celebrations. It's said that putting it on sandwiches was
kind of a novel idea, as the poultry was normally
reserved for more formal holiday meals. Rudy Suck, who managed

(16:02):
the Brown Hotel during the time the Hot Brown was invented,
told the story as a somewhat collaborative effort, noting that
he thought the initial plan sounded quote a little flat,
before Chef Schmidt said that he would put it under
the broiler to bubble the.

Speaker 2 (16:18):
Cheese in the sauce.

Speaker 1 (16:20):
The mader D's initial reaction to a stack of turkey
on bread with a white sauce was that it needed
a little color. To add that splash of color, the
bacon and pimentoes were added, although over time the hotel's
version shifted away from pimentoes to tomatoes. The dish quickly
became popular. It's remained a staple of Louisville and the

(16:41):
Brown Hotel, with a few gaps that we will talk
about for a century. James Graham Brown died in nineteen
sixty nine, and his legacy is a little bit of
a mixed bag. He was documented as being very anti
union and pretty racist. He did, not, for example, want
Kentucky to segregate, and he publicly stated that if a

(17:02):
union were to form at his hotel, he would sell
the whole thing. He also, though, gave generously to charity,
and when he died with no next of kin, after
having lived for decades in a small suite at the hotel,
he left his one hundred million dollar estate to the
people of the city, having arranged for numerous charities and
public works projects to be funded long term from his fortune,

(17:25):
with the wording of his will indicating that the money
was to be used to promote the well being of
the citizens and bring recognition to both Louisville and the
rest of the state. His foundation is still in operation.
It uses funds to invest in a variety of organizations
to promote economic prosperity, education, and quality of life. After

(17:45):
Brown's death, the hotel that had become a foundation of
the downtown scene of the city faltered. It ultimately closed
in nineteen seventy two and was sold to the Jefferson
County Public School System, which used it as an office
space for the Bard of Education until it was purchased, refurbished,
and reopened as a Hilton hotel in nineteen eighty four.

(18:06):
Then it passed to the Camberly Hotel Company. Today, it's
managed by the eighteen fifty nine Historic Hotels Group, and
it's on the National Register of Historic Places. The Brown
Hotel today will happily serve you a hot brown almost
anywhere on the premises. The hotel, restaurants and bar have
it on the menu. You can have one brought to
you via room service. If you don't eat meat, there

(18:29):
is a vegetarian version available. I think it uses mushrooms
as well as a smaller sized version of the original
for anybody who finds the rich dish too filling to
eat a full size order. The Brown Hotel says that
typically they sell about a thousand hot browns each week,
although during the Kentucky Derby it is usually more like
three hundred each day and sometimes even higher. The hotel

(18:52):
also shares its recipe for the original hot brown on
its website, revealing that the more NAIs sauce served there
does not include greere, or at least it seems that way.
The actual mornaise sauce recipe used in the kitchen of
the brown remains a secret. The official recipe does also
call for the crust to be cut off of the toast. Incidentally,

(19:13):
there are other sandwiches that are very similar to the
Hot Brown, particularly a Saint Louis dish called a Prosperity sandwich.
The Prosperity is almost identical but adds ham. It's also
popped up in the nineteen twenties. Yeah, it's believed that
this is definitely a take on the Hot Brown.

Speaker 2 (19:33):
Nobody thinks that Saint Louis invented it.

Speaker 1 (19:36):
And also, as a coda here, we mentioned two sauces
in this discussion that also qualify as eponymous food. So
we'll give you very brief explainers for these. First off, Bechamel.
It is named for Louis de Bechamel, Marquis de Montell,
who was the matra of the Duke d'Orleans in the
seventeenth century. He's believed to have had a hand in
its creation, or more specifically, altering and existing cream sauce recipe.

(20:02):
But that is argued by aficionados of Italian cooking history
because bechamel is the same thing as a Tuscan sauce
that preceded it, known as salsa koya, which is glue sauce.
The Italian origin story credits Catherine de Medici with bringing
the recipe to France. The other sauce we mentioned was Mournee,
which uses bechamel as a base. Morne sauce has uncertainty

(20:25):
regarding its naming attribution. It's usually noted as having been
named after Philippe, the Duke de Mournai, but that has
been argued because he died in the sixteen hundreds, which
was long before Mornai sauce showed up in the early
nineteenth century, so it's possible that this was named for
someone else. There are a number of possible mornaise no

(20:46):
evidence that they specifically inspired the sauce. Yeah, there are
definitely people where someone goes, hey, this is a Mornee
that was a fairly prominent person at the time this
sauce pops up, but there's never really a clear indicator
that they had any involvement in it. It is almost
time for my favorite sandwich segment, but first, we are

(21:06):
going to hear from some of the sponsors that keep
stuff you missed in history class going. All right, it's
time for a contentious one and the most delicious one.
The origin of this is either New York or Nebraska,

(21:29):
and either way, the ruben is made with corned beef,
souer kraut, Swiss cheese, and Thousand Island dressing on rye bread.
It's usually pressed or grilled. It is a poem of
sandwich perfection. In my book, I love this sandwich so
much so. The first contender that we're going to talk
about as the origin is Ruben's Restaurant and Delicatessen in

(21:50):
New York, which was opened by a man named Arnold Ruben.
Arnold was of German Jewish ancestry. He was born in
Germany in eighteen eighty five. Teen thirties, the US Works
Progress Administration launched the Federal Writers Project, Folklore Project Life Histories,
and from nineteen thirty six to nineteen thirty nine they

(22:10):
collected stories for people about their lives. Arnold Ruben gave
his story on December eighteenth, nineteen thirty eight. Arnold Manoff
conducted the interview and also provided additional text that contextualizes
who the interviewee is. Manoff's description of the restaurant reads
as follows quote. The restaurant can be briefly described as

(22:33):
an interior near Fifth Avenue designed to resemble the lounge
room of the Radio City Music Hall. Soft light, subdued lighting,
rich carpeting, and mister Ruben's stuffed fish mounted around the walls,
a small bar near the checkroom, and a delicatess encounter
in the back. More detailed, this is the impression you
get of Rubens. You're walking up fifty eighth Street toward

(22:56):
Fifth Avenue. Suddenly the wall of ricktier left is ended,
and the periphery of your eye catches a huge pane
of glass curtained in cream folds and shrubberied formally. At
the bottom, a red blazing neon sprawls over the window.
Rubens typical. This is Rubens. Who is Ruben? That his
name should stand alone, without a word of explanation, without

(23:20):
even a first name, without a company or ink after it. Well,
all right, Ruben, twenty five feet long, five feet high,
on fifty eighth Street, right next to the Savoy Plaza,
the Sherry Netherland nearby Central Park, the Old Plaza Fifth
Avenue nearby Park Avenue a ritzy restaurant if you judge

(23:40):
by what you can't see from the outside. The form
that manaf filled out lists under Ruben's special skills and interests,
and this charmed me to pieces quote special skill at
concocting sandwiches, interested in fishing. The form also described our

(24:00):
as healthy and alive in the Broadway nervous tempo manner.
Arnold's statements and man Off talks about how he got
started as a peddler as a kid and eventually became
the father of the sandwich. He described the origin of
the sandwich quote, Well, I'll tell you about how I
got the sandwich idea. I owned a delicatessen on Broadway,

(24:21):
and one day a dame walks in, one of the
theatrical dames, and she's down and out, I suppose, and
she asked me for something to eat. Her name was
Anna Silos. Well, I'm feeling sort of good, so I
figure I'll clown around for the dame. That's how it
all came about. I'm clouning for the dame. Well what
do I do? I take a holy bread that I
used to keep and grab the knife and you know,

(24:43):
clouding like, I cut it right through the bias. Then
I take some roast beef. I don't remember exactly what,
but anyway, I figure i'll put anything on. So I
take some meat and cheese and I slap it on.
I put some spice and stuff, and I make her
up a sandwich. It was a foot high. Well, the
Dame just eats it, that's all. She must have been
plenty hungry. And when she gets through, she says, mister Ruben,

(25:06):
that's the best sandwich I ever tasted in my life. Well,
the idea comes to me in a flash. I'll call
it the Anna Cilos Sandwich after the Dame. Then one
night she brings some friends up, you know, stage people
in a newspaper man and this guy he goes right
behind the counter and makes himself up a sandwich. And
then he tells me, why don't I call the sandwich

(25:26):
after celebrities, like what happened with Anna Silos. Why don't
I call it the Ana Cilo Sandwich. Well, boys, in
a flash, I get the idea in a Silos, I'll
call it a Ruben special. And that's how it started.
Bless Tracy for reading that long quote I included for
a nineteen eighty five book called Craig Clayborns The New

(25:47):
York Times Food Encyclopedia. Arnold Ruben's daughter, Patricia B. Taylor
gave the following quote describing the sandwich's origin. It has
some subtle differences to your father's worship. It's us a
little shorter, she said.

Speaker 2 (26:01):
Quote.

Speaker 1 (26:01):
The year was nineteen fourteen. Late one evening, a leading
lady of actor Charlie Chaplin came into the restaurant and said, Ruben,
make me a sandwich. Make it a combination. I'm so
hungry I could eat a brick. He took a loaf
of rye bread, cut two slices on the bias, and
stacked one piece with slice Virginia ham roast, turkey and
imported Swiss cheese, topped off with coleslaw and lots of

(26:24):
Ruben's special Russian dressing and the second slice of bread.
He served it to the lady, who said, Gee, Ruben,
this is the best sandwich I ever ate. You ought
to call it the Annette Seloast Special, to which he replied, like,
hell I will, I'll call it a Ruben Special, though
Arnold Reuben was very confident that he invented the Ruben sandwich.
There's another contender which also has a good story, and

(26:48):
that is Bernard Shimmel. This version is championed by Shemmel's granddaughter,
Elizabeth Wheel, who first shared her family's story of the
sandwich in the New York Times magazine. According to her,
her great her grandfather was a hotelier who opened hotels
along the railroad lines starting in Chicago and running west,
and her grandfather, Bernard, was also in the family business.

(27:10):
In the nineteen twenties, Bernard often played poker with his
friends at the family's Blackstone Hotel in Omaha, Nebraska, and
one night one of the players wanted a sandwich. That
player was Ruben Koulakowski, and he asked for a sandwich
specifically with corned beef and sour kraut, though Shimmel dressed
it up with Swiss cheese and dressing, which is arguably

(27:33):
what makes a Ruben Ruben. Sometimes, Ruben Koulakowski is given
credit for creating it, and that has also been complicated
over the years because Ruben's last name has sometimes been
shortened to k Kay in various retellings because the resulting sandwich,
though regardless, turned out so delicious Shimmel put it on
the menu at all of the family's hotels.

Speaker 2 (27:57):
Now this has led to impassioned debate.

Speaker 1 (28:00):
The Ruben is to some a quintessential New York sandwich,
and Arnold Ruben's family story is that he invented it
in nineteen fourteen. There's no supporting evidence for that. On
the other hand, there are print menus and newspaper mentions
of the Shemel origin, but the earliest one is from
nineteen thirty four on a menu from the Blackstone. This

(28:22):
is later than the New York version is said to
have been created, but it's the oldest primary source specifically
naming the sandwich still. Even the Ruben family's earlier story
describes as sandwich that has ham turkey and coleslaw on it,
which is not exactly the Ruben sandwich as it's known today.
Either way, it's the Shimmel Hotel group that won acclaim

(28:45):
for the sandwich in nineteen fifty six, because that year
it was entered into the National Sandwich Idea contest by
a chef from one of the Shimel hotels, and it
won and it got written up in a lot of papers,
and it got to push into the national spot light
and it has been popular ever since across the country
and in my tummy. I love these episodes because I

(29:11):
have a lot to.

Speaker 2 (29:12):
Talk about these saints, but.

Speaker 1 (29:14):
Also because I got to talk about my favorite sandwich.

Speaker 2 (29:18):
Listen, We'll eat a rubin any day of the week, Okay.

Speaker 1 (29:23):
And now I have listener mate, which is also another
one about one of my favorite episodes, which is Advent Calendars.
This is from our listener Amy, who writes, Hi, Holly
and Tracy, I know you said you wanted to hear
about all the Advent calendars.

Speaker 2 (29:37):
That is correct.

Speaker 1 (29:38):
This past year I got my kiddo one from the
Exit Game company. They generally make games that you do
all in one sitting, and they take a long time.
We both have a hard time getting through that. But
the Advent Calendar had one puzzle a day and all
were tied into a larger storyline. There are multiple options,
and she wants to get one every year now she's fourteen.

(30:00):
So for anyone with a teen it's a super fun
way to bond and make time to be together every day.
They're not easy either. You definitely need the teamwork. Here
is a photo of it. Also, I don't really have
a pet, but here are some gorgeous cardinals I saw
in Hawaii. I think they are called red crested cardinals.
Chow and thanks for a fabulous podcast, Amy. This is

(30:23):
such a cool idea and when I had never heard of.
I feel like for people who love puzzle solving, this
is a really, really great one. And I do like
the idea that you bake in some family time during
the holidays when it's busy and it's hard to stop
sometimes and take a moment. These cardinals are beautiful.

Speaker 2 (30:41):
Listen.

Speaker 1 (30:42):
I'm a crazy bird lady at this stage in my life.
I feed the birds and watch them on my deck
for hours. So I am very happy for cardinal pictures.
And these are very beautiful. They don't look like the
ones that we would see in the continental US that
are solid red. They are kind of a gray and
black with white chests, and then their head is a
spectacle killer shade of red. They're very beautiful, So thank you.

(31:03):
I'll take wildlife pictures as much as i'll take a pet.
If you would like to share your stories of wildlife pets.
Games Admin calendars, sandwiches. I hope we get a lot
of things about people's favorite sandwiches. You could do that
at history podcast atiheartradio dot com. You can also find
us on social media as missed in History And if

(31:24):
you have not yet subscribed to the podcast, that is
so easy to do. You can do it on the
iHeartRadio app or anywhere you listen to your favorite shows.
Stuff you Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio.
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

(31:44):
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

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