Here it is folks, your first glimpse into my process. This week I bought lunch meat so that I wouldn’t have to buy lunch during the day a) to save money and b) because I don’t have time to buy lunch (I know, poor me). So I bought lunch meat and bread.
On Sunday night, I set out to make the first sandwich from the lunchmeat, which by the way was turkey and salami. mmm my faves. Now, the trick to creating a sandwich to last for half a day in your backpack, suitcase, briefcase what have you, is to make sure that the condiments/filling of your sandwich does nothing to moisten your bread along the way. The types of things that cause this are:
-tuna
-tomatoes
-cucumbers
-oil/vinegar
A way to keep these in your sandwich but still have dry bread come noon is to buffer the water-filled product with some lettuce. This is actually pretty reliable as a method, just be sure that when you rinse your lettuce before use, you don’t put it directly on the bread as this would pretty much defeate the purpose of using the lettuce in the first place!
So on Sunday night I came into the kitchen and I surveyed my stock. Uh oh, no lettuce! How was I to buffer the sandie from the bread?!? Ok I had to think. I identified some Kale in my fridge. Kale, I thought, RAW KALE. ok I’ll try it.
So here’s what the week looked like:
Monday: turkey/salami, kale, tomato, banana peppers, yellow mustard and tomatoes.
this sandwich tasted good, the kale worked; it was crunchy in a satisfying way and it felt like I was getting more nutrients than if I had only eaten plain lettuce. This was an exciting development, but there was something to the taste of the kale that I didn’t necessarily like with the sandwich. It was pretty peppery and it almost tasted like soy sauce! Needless to say the typical turkey sandwich wasn’t necessarily the ideal fit for my palate using kale.
Tuesday: turkey/salami kale, tomato and olive hummus
This sandwich was actually really good. I liked the consistency of the hummus with the crunchyness of the turkey and all the flavors interestingly complemented each other. I felt good eating it, it was filling and it felt a bit exotic.
Wednesday: back to basics; turkey/salami, kale, tomato, yellow mustard and red onion
This sandwich was really good. switching the onion for the banana pepper somehow did the trick on this one. I think if I had added banana pepper to this sandwich it actually would have tasted really good, I think the onion was key. It helped the sandwich stay classy even despite the kale! This was a great discovery and I asked myself why I hadn’t thought of working with the red onion all along.
Thursday (today): A BREAKTHROUGH:
turkey/salami, tomato, kale, red onions and this–blue cheese and brown mustard.
This was it. The blue cheese complements the pepperyness of the kale, and the brown mustard complements the turkey and the blue cheese and the onion brings it all together with a delicious and fresh tomato!
This is so much fun. I could do this every day. the truth is, all these sandwiches were delicious but to eat today’s brilliant blue cheese turkey kale creation, I was satisfied knowing that it was a long road to get here and there was still so much ground to cover. I will check in tomorrow with some pictures of my sandwich and who knows, maybe I’ll be able to top today’s discovery.
note: this sandwich was made simply. There are not bells and whistles allowed simply because I have a time constraint in the construction of the sandwich and so I’m working with time, materials and transportability.
Filed under: Make
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