i love sandwiches

Or sammiches, as I prefer to call them.  Before we enter into that discussion, however, you must first see our farmers market haul from the first offical market of the season.

green peppers, pattypan squash, spring onions, white cucumbers, red potatoes, green beans (blue lake?), beets, summer squash, and a ginormous cabbage

All for around $20.  Not bad.  There were fewer stalls than usual and no greens (so frustrating!), but...  what can you do?  Michael and I still had a fun time going around and talking to the growers.  We also brought my buddy Becca with us, and it was her first time ever, officially popping her Huntington Farmers Market cherry.  Hooray!  Michael also managed to get interviewed for the evening news (his closing line was 'Eat your veggies!'), but we don't have cable or local channels, so we didn't get to see it.  That boy just attracts cameras wherever he goes.  Sheesh.  No, I'm not jealous it wasn't me they interviewed.  Really.  I swear.  Ok, maybe a little bit.  

Anyway, on to the the real meat (so to speak) of this post.  (soy protein?  wheat meat?...we need a new saying here.)  I was scanning through pictures that haven't yet made it onto the blogeroonie, and I noticed that I have an inordinate amount of pictures of sammiches.  I guess, in a regular post, they sort of get overlooked in a 'oh, they're not really a meal that's creative or fun and no one cares about my sammich obsession' kind of way.  I mean, I think that, until I look and see a bunch of neglected sammich pictures building up and begging to be shown.  Poor sammiches.  It's your turn.

monster dinner sammie

I guess I could have color-corrected that one a bit more.  Oh well.  Anyway, this is something Michael and I do from time to time, and I'm sure I've talked about it before.  At least once.  But there are evenings when we look at eachother and ask, 'What do you want for dinner?' and one of us (ok, usually him) suggests, innocently, 'Giant sammich?'.  I say innocently because, this is one mothereffer to make.  Really.  It always, always involves a trip to the grocery store, which is why I generally veto the giant sammich, even though I love it.  You see, I never buy chickn strips anymore, so there's that.  And, yeah, it has to have them.  And it's rare that we also have: roasted red peppers, artichokes, black olives, avocado, basil, tomatoes, lettuce, squash, zucchini (those last two are optional, but phenomenal), some type of Italian dressing, and a huge loaf of ciabatta bread all at once.  But seriously...once all those things go on there together...  you're in heaven.  You see, you assemble the sammich and then wrap the whole thing tightly in plastic wrap and set a heavy book on top and leave it for like a half hour so that all the flavors combine and get extra awesome.  And then you eat it.  Like, all of it.  We never have leftover giant sammich.  So anyway, that's one sammich obsession.

rad lunch sammich

Next up is the lunch sammich.  Lunch sammiches are, generally, lighter.  The bread isn't quite as serious.  There's probably some fake lunch meat on there.  What makes this one particularly awesome is the lunch meat that Michael's mom got from Indiana that's like cranberry and tofurkey or something...I can't remember, but it's Thanksgiving themed.  Oh, and this was right after I learned that I love raw squash and zucchini (they are sauteed on the giant sammich, by the way), so this one has thin slices of both of those.  Ok, honestly?  The real reason I eat sammiches most of the time is to have a vehicle for mustard.  I had some fancypants mustard that I put on this one.  And you probably know about my mustard obsession.  Sometimes, I put 2 different types of mustard on one sammich.  Just to see what will happen.  Also, for those of you who love avocado, but don't know how to eat it on a sammich without it slipping out all over the place, do this:  mush it up on the top piece of bread.  Use a fork.  That way, it's more like a spread.  

the emergency sammich

Chances are, you have the makings of a sammich in your fridge in case of emergency.  If not, the components of a sammich are not that expensive.  This particular sammich came about the other night when our city had a water main break and there was no water for like 5 hours.  I know you don't REALLY need water to make a decent meal, but...  well...  you sort of do.  But you know what you don't need water to make?  That's right.  A sammich.  We happened to have some leftover lunch meatses and fake cheese (from the seitan parmesan night) and bread and lettuce and avocado, so when I learned the water was out, I just walked to the corner market, purchased 2 tomatoes, 2 gallons of drinking water, and a case of beer, and I was set for the night!  These we fried old school style in the cast iron skillet (just the cheeze and meats inside, then added the toppings after the bread was nice and black).  Once we ran out of lunch meat, I made a cheeze and tomato sammich and Michael had a PB&J (another classic, of course).  We did have this with a huge salad, in order to get some nutrition out of the meal.  I also, for the record, like how this sammich looks like a face with blueberry eye-stalks.  

the smooshed sammich

I really like paninis.  I like paninis so much that I will put just about any type of sammich in the Foreman grill and squash the hell out of it.  There is just something about a seriously compact sammich that was once huge and hard to put in your mouth.  Especially if the bread is big, like this bread was.  Plus, they're crispy and pretty and warm and lovely.  I remember this sammich in particular because we made them for a late afternoon lunch in between episodes of Jekyll (awesome show for the first few episodes, then it gets stupid and sucks).  Sammiches are good to eat while you watch tv or movies because you don't have to look at them to make sure you're getting all the good bits in your mouth at once.  That's the beauty of the sammich.  All the good bits are there, all the time.  I mean, if you make it right.  

In conclusion, you do not need to work at Subway to be a sandwich artist.  It's better to be a sammich artist in your own home with better ingredients and you don't have to wear gloves and your kitchen probably doesn't smell like pizza subs as soon as you walk in.  

The end.