The troubles of sandwiches and salads

 “It takes four men to dress a salad: a wise man for the salt, madman for the pepper, a miser for the vinegar, and spendthrift for the oil.” Anonymous

So it was salad and sandwich night in Culinary 107.
How hard is it to make a sandwich? Honestly it’s just a sandwich! Bread, cheese, some protein, maybe some veggies and some flavor with a spread or marinade. See? Sandwich! But when you are told make a sandwich and present it with the homemade mayo you have to hand whip; my mind went blank. Really MJ, stop taking those drugs for the sinus infection and get to work!

So I am feeling light, airy, springy. Let’s do a smoked chicken, bacon, and avocado wrap with some bean sprouts, julienned carrot and a green goddess mayo. Yummy! Well it never happened. Ingredients were a little sparse to make a healthy sandwich like that. So I wound up making my green goddess dressing, rolling it up with some of the ham instead of the original plan of chicken. There was no bacon, no avocado, and no sprouts. I found some carrot, the spring mix and tomato. How frustrating, it had to be the worst sandwich ever presented. At least the green goddess dressing worked.

Salad!! I love salad. I grew up in the garden state I should know how to make the perfect salad! My father had the best garden, oh how I miss that garden.

When I first moved to the Hampton Roads area as a young almost sexy Navy wife, we were taken out to dinner to the Fisherman’s Wharf (no longer in business). I was thrilled to see the salad bar. Not the greatest salad bar, but I was craving some lettuce I guess that day since I was little bit pregnant at the time. When I sat down with my “ginourmous” salad, everyone looked at me and asked why I am on a diet? Geez salad is not a diet thing people. Salad is wonderful crisp vegetables. You can make a salad out of almost anything; just a little imagination is all you need.

Well my imagination seriously fell apart and dissolved along with that sinus medication. What I needed was a whole lot of pixie dust and a light bulb to light up for me. We have spring mix, cool. Have to do a vinaigrette requirement. I can do that. So let’s get moving.

And seriously folks nothing is jiving in this brain.  Found some sun dried tomatoes, let’s make vinaigrette out of that! Lots of garlic, some herbs, balsamic vinegar, olive oil and pixie dust. There is no fresh basil to be found, bummer. A mock bread salad was forming in the old brain. Toasted up some white bread with olive oil, s&p and garlic, found some provolone; cubed that up, tossed everything into the vinaigrette and plated it up. Well at least it looked like spring.

Guess I didn’t have enough pixie dust last night.