Okay, if you're going to be that pedantic about it -- if you go to New Orleans and buy a muffaletta, only you scrape off the olives, you really are eating a muffaletta. It's not like you bought a hero, or a sub, or an Italian hoagie.

You're just not eating all of the muffaletta.

Pfft. By this logic you're still eating a sandwich if you throw away the bread and simply eat the cold cuts.

I'm pretty confident that I'm still eating a muffaletta.

Oh man. Sandwich existentialism. I love you guys.

Pfft. By this logic you're still eating a sandwich if you throw away the bread and simply eat the cold cuts.

If you never bother to put the cold cuts between bread, then I suppose you have a point. It's really something else at that point.

But if you buy a sandwich and fail to eat the bread, how is that not still a sandwich, just one eaten in a peculiar manner?

An open face sandwich is still a sandwich. Even if all you do is eat the meat and gravy and leave the bread.

Damn. Now I want an open face sammich and mashed taters.

I say if you remove the olive salad and then eat the muffaletta, you are eating a muffaletta.

However, if you remove the olive salad and then give the sandwich to someone else, you are not giving them a muffaletta. You are giving them a nameless sandwich.

It makes sense to me.

I'd say that a muffaletta without the olives is still a muffaletta. The bread really defines it more than the olives do -- the olives are just customary. (Hmm. The bread is both neccesary and sufficient. The olives are not neccesary; are they sufficient? The meat is neither neccesary nor sufficient.)

Is anyone else hungry?

I would now actually sell a kidney for a Central Grocery muffaletta.

I mean, I don't even like olives!

(...and we've gone full circle.)