Sandwich

I finally got sick of eating sesame seed bagels with strawberry cream cheese. After a day of March Break tour guiding yesterday, I was famished and knew I needed to make myself something delicious and nutritious for supper. I haven’t cooked in a little while and it seemed as though I was a little out of practice with this whole meal decision thing. Because of this, I wandered around the grocery store for a torturous amount of time, pondering what it was that I wanted to eat. Now that I look back, the answer was so simple.

I wanted a sandwich.

I’ve been craving a gourmet sandwich ever since I made my mom the pear, ham and gruyere sandwich over reading week. As I walked up and down the deli aisle of the grocery store, I was practically drooling in anticipation. But what would I put on my sandwich? Since I’m not a fan of duplicate blog posts, I needed to make something dramatically different than my mom’s fruity fare. So I improvised. I was getting a huge chunk of brie anyways (because I eat an unhealthy amount of cheese), and decided to build my sandwich around this. Add some grilled chicken, red pepper and leftover red onion and voila! I’m a master sandwich maker (no sexist jokes, please). Also, the only protein I’ve eaten in what seems like weeks has been cheese, so it was nice to have some chicken in there. Finally, I had some parsley leftover in the fridge, so I decided to throw that in for fun. I popped the entire sandwich in the toaster oven for a bit and everything got heated, melty and ultra flavourful. I’m almost salivating just thinking about it.

The recipe is under the pictures, ch-ch-check it out!

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I unfortunately did not get to eat this sandwich.

It has now been three days since I got my wisdom teeth removed, but I am still unable to open my mouth properly. The only way I can eat is by taking the tiniest baby bites of food, chewing them carefully with my front teeth like I’m a rodent nibbling on a seed, and mushing that food around in my mouth until I eventually swallow the entire thing, still partially whole. It takes me approximately an hour to eat a single meal.

With this dilemma in mind, it probably would have taken me an entire afternoon to eat this sandwich. Instead of wasting away at the kitchen table listening to David Suzuki talk about decomposing bodies (seriously, this was what was on CBC at lunch time), I decided to instead make this sandwich for my mom. This sandwich was inspired by the leftover gruyere we had sitting in our fridge from the mac and cheese I made earlier this week. The pear, gruyere, ham combination came flitting into my mind one day, and a quick googling told me that the three together would produce wonderful flavours. My mom’s verdict of the sandwich was that it was really good, so I’ll have to take her word for it until I can eat solid foods again and make myself a duplicate of this sandwich back in Ottawa.

Anatomy of the sandwich:

Bread: focaccia or ciabatta bun
Layer 1: Two slices of black forest ham
Layer 2: Approximately six thin slices of gruyere cheese
Layer 3: One pear, sliced thinly
Layer 4: Pepper, to the max
Layer 5: Arugula
Layer 6: a dabbling of pesto

Voila! A delicious and quick lunchtime melt that is suitable for feeding mothers, significant others or, most importantly, yourself. Grill all these things together and you have a savoury and filling sandwich. I made my mom’s sandwich in our fancy convection microwave since it has a special “grill” button. If you don’t have one of these high tech devices, you can always just melt everything in your toaster oven or oven. Gosh I wish I had tried a bite.

PS: This whole wisdom teeth thing isn’t all bad. Case in point: I’m currently eating a homemade chocolate milkshake with a spoon. Life is grand.