No one in Britain can agree on what it means to be British. I read that once in an article about British culture. In many ways it's true. People support different national football teams; there are British people of every colour; there are several different languages spoken and even English - the most widespread - comes in a multitude of flavours and varieties. There are, however, several very widespread habits which, although perhaps not as universal as to qualify as national characteristics, are nevertheless common enough in Britain and less common enough elsewhere to cause visitors to remark on them as peculiarities of the British. Regularly drinking copious amounts of alchohol, for example, along with a tendency to become rather loud and aggressive when under the influence - that's very British. So is wearing T-shirts when it is freezing cold, just because it's July.
One other thing I notice, now that I have lived outside Britain for a number of years and visit only occasionally and for short periods, is that the British are a nation of sandwich-eaters. The pre-packed triangular sandwich, on plain white or brown-with-wee-seeds-in-it bread is everywhere. Bus and train stations, on the trains, in pubs - anywhere you might find yourself out and about and hungry, the sandwich is the commonest, and often the only, thing on offer as a quick fix. There are even fairly up-market sandwich bars sprouting across the nation, so it seems people like sandwiches. It's not just that they can't think of anything else for a quick snack. Maybe I'm remembering things wrong, but I think the pre-packed sandwich is much more common in Britain nowadays than it ever was before.
I'm not much of a sandwich enthusiast, which is just as well since, sadly, the vegetarian choice of filling has not expanded along with the general sandwich ubiquity and often the only option is, as was the case many years ago, the boring old cheese ploughman's. And I've noticed that even that is often sold-out.
One recent and surprising exception, was the discovery of a pack of 'spinach, feta and red-onion' sandwiches in a snack bar at Luton airport. Surprising, firstly, because it was in Luton Airport: a place where I would never expect anything remotely pleasant to occur. I was on the way from Aberdeen to Amsterdam - doing the Easy-Jet-hop - and had a few hours to spare. They sell sandwiches on Easy Jet too, by the way, but on this occasion there were no veggie ones and I was starving. The spinach, feta and red-onion was the only veggie filling available and furthermore, there was only one pack left, so I grabbed it. I was further surprised by the fact that the sandwiches in the box were actually quite tasty. Tasty enough, in fact, to prompt me to take note of the filling ingredients for later use.
What we have here then, is basically a spinach, feta and red onion sandwich without the bread.
Wash and roughly chop the spinach and tomatoes. Finely chop the onion and cut the cheese into cubes. Put all the ingredients into a large bowl and mix gently.