use real butter

My first (food) love is sushi.

My second (food) love is a sandwich. It’s a beautiful thing, really. Totally flexible yet wholly satisfying and comforting. Sandwiches can be cold, hot, both, crunchy, mushy, gooey, spicy, tangy, sweet, open, closed, stacked, dainty, behemoth, you name it. I love me a Good Sandwich.

Oh, but a little business before I go on about my love affair with The Sandwich. Thank you to the person(s) who nominated this blog for the Death by Chocolate competition on Culinate. I am flattered, to say the least. Unfortunately, because of my treatment, I am unable to travel and feel it isn’t appropriate for me to enter. Not to mention, the entries are by some of my absolute favorite food bloggers like: Peabody, Bea, Helene, Anita, Jaden, and Meeta… just to name a few! I encourage you all to go and look, drool, and vote.

Thanks also to all of you for your kind words of support. I think my tastebuds are somewhat recovered (had an infection to boot). I’ve just accepted that my fooding will be boned until treatment ends in several months. So, no worries. I shall still attempt to cook and hopefully post. Things just have a way of improving or sucking very quickly here and I have to go with the flow day to day. Stick with me on this. We’ll go places, I promise. xxoo

I’ll admit that I’m not much a sweet sandwich fan. I will take salty over sweet any day. Despite my love of making sweets, I don’t dig on them too much. Take a taste for quality control, distribute. But once I make a beautiful sandwich, I’m not as magnanimous as all that. I covet a good sandwich be it grilled cheese, a BLT (the B, the B!), roasted eggplant, cucumber, Philly cheese steak, In-n-Out Burger (oh yes, ohhhhh yes), Green Bomber, Oporto, Chicken Diablo… The list is frighteningly and delightfully long. The beauty of the sandwich is how remarkably versatile it is, like no other.

chopped leftover corned beef

The Reuben is one of my favorite sandwiches. Although traditionally prepared with rye bread, I can’t help but substitute some good old sourdough because we rarely ever have rye bread on hand in our house and neither of us is a huge fan. But rye aside, this time around I had a corned beef brisket instead of sliced deli meat in the fridge. I should have shredded the brisket while it was hot, but wound up slicing and chopping it when it was cold. I really love piling thinly sliced deli corned beef on a sandwich, but I have to avoid deli meats for a while. The point is… start with some good corned beef.

those would be lunch fixins

Round up some bread, Swiss cheese, sauerkraut, Russian dressing, and butter to accompany the corned beef. I like to squeeze out the sauerkraut otherwise I wind up with a super soggy sammy and that makes for a sad lunch. Now, to do it right, you’ve got to butter the bread. I typically butter the outside face because my waistline doesn’t really need the inside face buttered too. Ha - that’s your healthy step right there.

onto the grill pan

Set the buttered face down on a pan over medium heat. Layer cheese, corned beef, and then set the other slice, buttered side out, on top. You want the bread to turn golden and the cheese to melt at the same time. High heat will burn your bread before the cheese has begun to melt, so just be patient.

when it’s ready, flip the sandwich

Flip the sandwich and cook until the other side achieves the same golden crunchiness. Watch it carefully, it gets there much faster than the first side. Some folks like to dump a pile of sauerkraut on the pan and dry it out or brown it up. I can go either way there. This time I removed the sandwich from the pan and dressed it with sauerkraut and Russian dressing.

dress it while it’s hot

I prefer to slice my Reuben into two or three sections. It helps control the amount of oozage from the dressing and feels like I’m eating multiple small sandwiches, which is a concept that elicits great joy for me.

delicious reuben - the love affair rages on

Reuben Sandwich

2 slices of bread (rye or otherwise - nothing flimsy, okay?)
corned beef (slices, shredded, chopped, you pick)
Swiss cheese
sauerkraut, drained
Russian dressing or 1000 Island if you must
butter

Butter the outside faces of the bread. Heat a pan over medium flame. Set a slice of bread buttered-side down on the pan. Layer with cheese and then corned beef. Set the other slice on top, buttered-side up. Monitor that the cheese melts at the same rate that the bread turns golden and crisp. Flip the sandwich and brown the other side. Remove from heat. Open the sandwich meat-side. Layer sauerkraut and dressing. Close sandwich, slice. Serve.

I felt like total crap this morning. Allergies strike again. I gave my health care provider a call and they put me on the line with a pharmacist who rattled off a list of 6 over the counter meds I could try to relieve my symptoms. I love that woman!

Down in Boulder I met with Beth and Nicole for lunch at Il Pastaio which was awesome. The food was great and we caught each other up before Beth had to get back to work - her last full day before going part-time.

beth and nic humor me before tucking into lunch

But the best surprise of the day was getting the nicest care package from Sam! She remembered that I liked lemony things so she sent an entire box full of them.

kaweah was very curious to see what sam sent

puckery goodness

Thanks Sam! What a sweetheart and such a cheery treat. My new antihistamine eye drops were also starting to work, so hurray for that and I’m feeling a lot less bitchy. My Darling, Jeremy got out our portable AC unit and set it up in our bedroom so I can sleep comfortably without letting all of the pollen in (they say 3-4 am is the worst time for pollen - actually, that’s what some lady on a plane told me). Nice to know when things are in the crapper, that there are wonderful people in my life who make my life wonderful. I’m grateful for all of them.

a lunch of soba noodles with some nifty new dishware