Sandwiches

I love love love sandwiches (minus the spelling because I always want to write 'which' or 'witch'). Aside from my spelling issues, I'm a fan. I don't really know what it is about sandwiches that make them so appealing to me, but I've always like them. Granted, back in the day I liked only peanut butter and jelly and the turkey sandwiches from this place we always drove by when visiting some relatives (but even then, only turkey and mayo). I was picky back then. To be fair, I really still am. I'm branching out though! I now eat salads, avocados, bacon (only in other dishes), and ham. This is pretty good for me. Sadly I am still anti mushrooms, bell peppers of all kinds, parsley and cilantro in great quantity, soups (though I may try french onion at some point in a semi-near future), olives, and all nuts. Oh, except for the occasional dry roasted hazelnut. Sad but true.

Perhaps one of the perks of sandwiches is that you can really put exactly what you want on a sandwich fairly easily. I mean most sandwich places/delis let you either create your own or add and subtract from the initial sandwich. This is nice. Plus, think about the variety. What can't you put on a sandwich? I mean really? I'm actually trying to think of something and failing. I guess any raw meat might be a little weird, but then again, raw meat in general is not something I adore. I'm sure if I liked it enough it would be totally doable. The other cool thing about sandwiches is that they can be made in any shape or size. Well, maybe this is only cool to those of us who enjoy making cookies with cool cookie cutters and mini food items.

I recently had a craving for a hot sandwich (or more specifically, I had a craving for something crunchy). Sadly I do not own a panini press or George Foreman so I was wondering what to do and came up with the awesome idea to cook the bread like it was a grilled cheese sandwich. IT WORKED. Here's what you do:
Grilled sandwich:
(obviously put whatever you like in it. This is what I did.)
-bread--sourdough is my favorite and a little sturdier than some other kinds, but really, whatever you like
-spread the outsides of the bread with butter
-get all the rest of your ingredients together so you don't try to multitask and almost burn the bread like I did
-heat the pan while you get everything together
-for example, get out the mayo, mustard, and honey (to make honey mustard because that's my favorite and I'm out), chop up some onions, wash your lettuce or mixed greens, slice your tomatoes, get the turkey ready, have salt, pepper, olive oil**, and balsamic** ready
-put slice 1 of the bread butter-down in the pan and cook it til its crispy. put cheese on the bread at this time if you want some cheese on your sandwich
-toast it as long as you like, put it on a plate
-put slice 2 of bread in like the first and toast as long as you like
-start getting slice 1 ready with everything on it as fast as you can so you don't burn the other piece
-take out slice 2 and put the sandwich together
-put it in the microwave for 15 seconds or so to get everything hot inside
*Of course, you certainly could cook everything on the bread in the pan but that just seemed tricky and potentially really messy so I opted for the microwave
**I love balsamic vinegar and associate olive oil with it (though I am not quite as in love with olive oil) so I tend to put it on sandwiches. It adds a little something extra. So does the salt and pepper. I never did this until living with TourGuideRay who is (usually) the classiest person ever. Thanks Ray!

My other favorite sandwiches ever:
-grilled cheese and tomato (on good bread, with a variety of cheese, and basil--Vault does my favorite one)
-strawberry and butter. This is probably the first recipe I ever invented. You butter two slices of really soft white bread and slice fresh strawberries thinly and put them on. Eat without crusts.
-Peanut butter and jelly (on toasted wheat bread, with creamy peanut butter, black or marionberry jelly, with a large glass of milk)
-breakfast sandwiches (this deserves and will get a new post at some point but for the time being, it would ideally involve a fried egg on buttered and jammed english muffin with Monterey jack cheese and sausage dipped in syrup)
-vanilla ice cream sandwiches. The skinny cow ones are really good, surprisingly
-caprese ones
-the turkey sandwiches from Gabriella's. I haven't had one in years but man oh man they were amazing. Turkey is my current go-to sandwich meat of choice.