The 14th of January is Hot Pastrami Sandwich Day.
Hot means warm, not spicy, as in layers and layers of heated pastrami, often on warmed rye bread as well.
Ask yourself when’s the last time you had a good Pastrami sandwich, or had one period? Sure, maybe purists would say that good Pastrami sandwiches are only available at 3 or 4 delis on the entire planet (some will say that the delis are one of the few legimate reasons for putting up with living in New York) but you know what, you can’t tell a great one until you’ve gone through a sampling to know from great when you taste it, so you’ve got to start somewhere.
If you’ve never had one or aren’t sure if you have, today’s the day to set that right, even though, having dodged the purists, you run straight into the kill-joys who advise to skip the day, saying that Pastrami isn’t good for you. But don’t mind them — they would probably ban cranberry sauce at Christmas too, given half a chance.
It’s true that a large Pastrami Sandwich (20 1/2 oz / 580g) can have about 1200 calories, 60g of fat, 4380mg of sodium and 170mg of cholesterol (gulp), but it’s Hot Pastrami Sandwich Day, not month — and if you can’t have one even once a year, then we don’t want to know what things are coming to.
Literature & Lore
“Anytime a person goes into a delicatessen and orders a pastrami on white bread, somewhere a Jew dies.”
— Milton Berle (American actor, 12 July 1908 – 27 March 2002)