So if you buy a muffaleta and only eat the olives, you've eaten a muffy?

(Belly-bumps Sean) Damn right, bro.

Yeah. I ordered the sandwich, I handed over the money, I'm calling it a muffaletta, damn it.

So if you buy a muffaleta and only eat the olives, you've eaten a muffy?

Nope. You need the bread. (If you eat the bread with just the olives, you've eaten a weird muffaleta, but you've still eaten one.)

So if you buy a muffaleta and only eat the olives, you've eaten a muffy?

No. You've eaten a bunch of nasty briney crap and handed a perfectly good muffaletta without the nasty briney crap to someone else, or thrown it away.

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?

You're presuming something like a muffeletta is an irreducible essence, when it is rather the sum of its parts. Without the olives (or bread) it's not a muffeletta. It's a sub or it's a pile of cold cuts but it isn't a muffeletta.

If you order a cheeseburger and scrape off the cheese and eat it, you have not just eaten a cheese burger. You ate a hamburger.

You need the bread.

I would have thought there's SOME minimum requirement. Sean and Deb, NSM.

If you order a cheeseburger, hold the cheese, what have you ordered? If you do the cheese holding yourself, what have you eaten?

I agree that there's an irreducible essence to many dishes. Whether or not it's the olive wrt muffalettas, I dunno.

All I'm saying is ... somebody needs to give Dana a damn muffaletta (however you choose to define it) before she starts contemplating life with only one eye.

If you order a cheeseburger and scrape off the cheese and eat it, you have not just eaten a cheese burger. You ate a hamburger.

I've ordered a pattieless Whopper in Burger King. It's a hamburger roll with cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, pickle, onion, and mustard.

But, you're right. If you order a cheeseburger and don't eat the cheese, you've eaten a hamburger. However, if you order a cheeseburger and don't eat the onions, you've still eaten a cheeseburger.

So if you buy a muffaleta and only eat the olives, you've eaten a muffy?

Well, you've eaten a really specific part of a muffaleta.

Mostly you've blown an awful lot of cash just to eat olive salad.

If you order a cheeseburger and scrape off the cheese and eat it, you have not just eaten a cheese burger. You ate a hamburger.

If you order a cheeseburger and scrape off the cheese, when there was a perfectly good hamburger on the menu -- a) you're a whacko. b) You'll probably have a hard time scraping it all off, thus leaving some behind, thus making what you ate not really a hamberger any more than it was a cheeseburger, and since you've now entered some weird food anomaly zone, the best reference is probably to look at the receipt, which will say CHEESEBURGER on it.

you've eaten a really specific part of a muffaleta.

But to go by your previous post, you've eaten a muffaletta. If you lose just the olives, have you eaten a muffaletta or part of one?