February 2024

I recently had one of those lunch conundrums where I only had tumbleweeds rolling through my fridge, and a few mismatched condiments. I didn’t have the means to make an egg sandwich, but I did have the awkward remains of a cheese board—jams, nuts, cheese, mustard. I admit, I had my doubts, but taking a risk sometimes pays off. I present to you: the cheese board sandwich.

It was a cold sharp cheddar and blackberry jam sandwich that enlightened me. (Sure, I was beside myself with hunger, but it was truly damn good.) Distinctly different from a grilled cheese sandwich, this one had only cold or room temperature components. The cheddar was tangy, salty, and robust, and the jam was sweet, earthy, and mellow. With a spongy ciabatta holding it all together, each giant bite I took was better than the last.

I was initially surprised at the combination, and then realized, oh, of course—any combination that you would eat in small bites on a cheese board is going to absolutely rock in large portions as a whole sandwich. What is a cheese board anyway, but a selection of ingredients that combine to make the perfect, most flavorful, most texturally appealing mouthful? Instead of daintily balancing each offering on a tiny, weakling cracker, I say, cram it all between two big slices of bread.

A good sandwich only requires a balance of flavors

The combinations are only limited by your choice of cheese board accessories. Like a cracker, your sandwich bread is a vehicle for any flavorsome bites you can fit on top—cheese, jams, tapenades, honey, or mustard. Add slices of fruit, fresh or dry, along with nuts, pickles, or olives.

I toasted up a couple slices of ciabatta, but you can use a baguette, bagel, or regular old soft wheat slices. Now it’s time for the most difficult and most liberating part: pairing flavors. Think about combining two or three parts of the five flavors: salty, acidic, bitter, sweet, and umami. Try slices of salty parmesan with sliced sweet pears and candied pecans in your sandwich. How about a swipe of black olive tapenade with ripe figs and manchego? Layer slabs of blue cheese with toasted walnuts and dried apricots on a roll and drizzle it all with honey.

Upon first glance, you might not have the most perfectly matched meal in your fridge, but don’t give up. I bet you can make a great sandwich with components that make no sense on paper. When you think about it, the cheese board sandwich makes perfect sense. And yet, there are a lot of notions restricting what makes a sandwich a sandwich. Does it need meat? Does it require cheese or lettuce? Are nuts allowed? It seems folly to look for limitations. If it makes a good nibble on a cracker, then it’ll make a fantastic meal between two slices of bread.

ChatGPT may soon remember things you tell it between conversations. OpenAI announced earlier this week that it is experimenting with a form of “long-term” memory for the AI chatbot that should let it recall things in between interactions.

The feature is currently only available to a small number of ChatGPT users, but OpenAI says that it will be able to remember things like whether you prefer meeting notes summarized in a specific way, or if you have told ChatGPT that you own a neighborhood shop. It will then be able to memorize this information and use it to provide better responses whenever you ask it specific things.

One nice thing about this upcoming feature is that OpenAI is putting a lot of control in the hands of the users. You’ll be able to control the personalization settings for ChatGPT from the Settings > Personalization > Memory page. When turned off, ChatGPT won’t remember things that you tell it not to. You’ll also be able to view and delete specific memories or clear them all out in one action.

Credit: OpenAI

The goal here, OpenAI says, is to have memories in ChatGPT evolve with your interactions without having them linked to specific conversations. And deleting an older chat won’t erase the memories that ChatGPT has from it, either, so those of us who like cleaner chats won’t have to worry about holding onto old conversations too long.

If you like having memory turned on but want to have a conversation with ChatGPT that doesn’t record anything, then you can also use what OpenAI calls a Temporary Chat, which is sort of like the equivalent of an incognito window. This chat won’t appear in your history, they won’t use memory, and they won’t be used to train any of OpenAI’s models.

You can also further customize ChatGPT’s memory by setting custom instructions on how much you want it to know about you, and even how you would like to respond. OpenAI says that it is providing these controls to the users as a way to make sure its privacy and safety standards keep up with ChatGPT’s advancements.

Keep in mind that different ChatGPT plugins may affect how your information is used, too, so that’s something to always be aware of.

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Consider the Cheese Board Sandwich

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