Oooey, Gooey, Hot and Chewy

As a child, I was a very picky eater. Years later, well, little has changed. All those foods my friends ate? Not happening on my plate. Mac and cheese? Oh Puh-leeze. Pizza? I think not (I do however really like pizza now). Grilled cheese with a bowl of soup? Send me to my room hungry Mommy. My Mother likes to a story about my eating habits-well, she loves to tell many, but this one she tells often. I was a tall, gangly child with super long legs and big buck teeth (Thank you Dr. Bacalars!!) and she was constantly fretting at the doctor about my eating habits and how skinny I was and she was sure I was malnourished. He patted her arm and told her I would eat when I was hungry. She couldn't leave well enough alone and tried many tricks to try to get me to eat. One of her least effective tricks was to blend my dinner up and try to have me drink it, since I have some issues with textures. It did not go as well as she hoped. Not more than 2 seconds after it landed in my stomach, it took a detour and headed North again, all over her. She pretty much gave up hope after that and just let me eat the parts of dinner I liked. I survived.

To this day I still don't do mac and cheese-odd, since I love pasta and I love cheese, but apparently not together. And I don't like grilled cheese. I do however fancy a grilled ham and cheese. Oh, so melty. So warm. So good.


I blogged a few weeks ago about the Frappe Vino. The frozen wine slush? I had it at a baby shower for a girl I worked with at the bank. It was like a reunion. 20 women who had spent a great deal of time together over the years. We had seen marriages, divorces, babies and death. And we waited many years to celebrate with our dear friend R. Her son is gorgeous and probably the most wanted and waited for baby ever.

I loved these sandwiches so much, I think I had three that night. The girls hosting the party made a smaller version of these but I was feeding several men at our party two weeks ago, so I used bigger rolls. Feast your eyes on these beauties......




Sweet and Savory Baked Ham Sandwiches

2 pounds good deli ham (no water added junk-go for the good stuff)
1 pound baby Swiss, very thinly sliced (from the deli too)
36 buns-I used a sandwich bun from the bakery
3 sticks of unsalted butter
6 TBSP brown sugar
4 TBSP Worcestershire sauce
4 TBSP Dijon mustard
2 tsp onion powder

In a 2 quart saucepan, bring to a gentle boil the butter, brown sugar, Worcestershire sauce, Dijon and onion powder. Stir until it is all melted and combined. Remove from heat and let cool.
Make the sandwiches. I used two pieces of ham and two slices of cheese-but I had it sliced about half the thickness that they normally slice it; you could see through it, and not just because of the holes. Place the made sandwiches in 9x13 cake pans. You need the cake pans or another tall sided pan since you will covering with foil. I used 3 pans because of the size of the buns. When the butter mixture has cooled, pour it evenly over the three pans. Cover the pans with tinfoil and place in the refrigerator overnight. Remove them from fridge a half an hour before baking. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Bake for 25 minutes covered. After the 25 minutes, remove the foil and bake an additional 5 to 8 minutes.

Good gravy, you need to make these. These were DEVOURED and I was told by several of the guys that they were sending their wives over to learn how to cook. While that touched the cockles of my heart, I just sent the recipe home with them. Next time I make them, I'm not sharing. Well, okay, I did share with Dude and Drama Queen when I made them a few days later.

A ......Minneuban?

Not quite a Cuban, a little Midwest influence? I took 5 ribs out of the slow cooker before adding the BBQ to the country style ribs and made some shredded pork. I poured a little of the cooking liquid in and a little bit of beef broth and stored in the fridge for the next day. We heated up the pork, split open a small French bread loaf, placed a slice of Havarti on the top and bottom, piled on some warm pork, some pancetta, some slices of roast beef and some Dijon mustard and panini-ed that sucker. Oh, so good. We scarfed these bad boys down right quick.

Dude is teaching himself to tile and here is the progress as of last week. I need to go down and click the update. We (he) gutted our downstairs bathroom and is rebuilding from scratch. Whoever built this house should be shot as their simple math skills were lacking as they apparently couldn't figure in the size of a 2x4 when measuring out for plumbing. The plumbing is too close to the wall and the furnace and well pump sit right on the other side of the wall. The first time we built the bathroom, he built a niche into the wall for the toilet tank to sit. He was able to cut out a little bit of the stud to get it to work this time. We are tiling the whole thing in black and white and it is starting to really take shape. I will snap some new photos soon, but here is the shower floor. It is finally large enough to really take a good shower-the last one was the size of camper shower!

Meatloaf Melt

I really hate housework. I'll admit it. I didn't get my Mom's cleaning gene. Our house was always clean and organized-it had to be because it was so tiny. She worked full time after I started first grade but still made sure the house was always clean-both dirt wise and clutter wise. Me, I make sure the dirt isn't there-counters wiped off (when I can find them), toilet is always clean (I'm a freak about that-ewww) and the like, but the clutter? Eh, I can live with it. I tried to go to bed early last night so I could get a good 8 hours of sleep and get up today and hit it. I had 4 loads of laundry to do, at least 2 sinkfuls (?) of dishes that can't be washed in the dishwasher, the boxes of Christmas decorations that just need to go about 25 feet out the garage door into the closet out there and some baking I wanted to do. Good intentions, good intentions. I slept for about 4-1/2 hours and then Dude and I were both awake. We watched "Living with Ed" on Discovery and then several "Property Virgins" and "My First Home" on HGTV and "Holmes on Homes" on whatever channel he is on. Then Food Network. I had such a headache and backache I had to get up and move and take aspirin. I had some breakfast, did one load of dishes and washed and dried two loads. Then I had to lay down since I was so tired I couldn't think straight. Slept a couple hours and then played on Facebook for 2 hours.

Dude went to work and suddenly I realized I hadn't eaten lunch and I was starving. I seriously wanted a bologna sandwich, but having no lunch meat in the house I needed to find something else. Hmmmm, I have some leftover meatloaf that Dude didn't take with him to work. I loped a hunk of bread off the French loaf on the island, grabbed some cheese and grilled it up in my grill pan. I would have used the panini press, but I had dishes drying on the counter so I just used the grill pan and another pan on top.

I enjoyed it with some Davinci Pinot Grigio. It was an okay bottle. Not very sweet, but no oaky taste, a pretty clean finish. Good with a salad or chicken I'm sure, but I had it with beef-that is how I roll.

It was really good; however I had sliced it into thick slices last night for dinner, so it was pretty thick for the panini, but I couldn't get it as squished with the grill pan versus the panini press, so that may have contributed to the thickness. I would also use more cheese. My Havarti was sliced pretty thin and it needed a little more creaminess. And I swear, I don't know why it looks so pink. It was cooked through to the correct temp last night, so please know it was not medium rare meatloaf.

Panini Love

I love gadgets and tools. My family always laughs at me. When my Mom says "have you seen......" my sister B will say "just wait, I'm sure Tami has bought it and will tell us all about it". They know me so well. I need to do some kind of Gadget Posts-using all the gadgets and tools I have bought over the years! I recently purchased a panini grill. I have been thinking about it for awhile. I kept thinking that I shouldn't-I could just use my stovetop grill with a brick. Well, that doesn't sound like fun, so while at Kohl's two weeks ago with Hermit Crab looking for college stuff, I saw a smaller one on sale, plus I had a 30 percent off coupon, so it was almost free! I broke it in tonight for myself. Dude is working, Hermit Crab is hot and crabby from working in the field and Drama Queen is at a friend's house to go to the midnight showing of Transformers. I have said it before and will say it again-I am a picky eater. I like plain, bland things and suffer from a lot of heartburn and other maladies of spicy/hot/different foods. I made my panini's with ham, turkey, cheese and a little butter and Miracle Whip. I picked up the cheese as it was said it was good for sandwiches. Nowhere does it really say WHAT kind of cheese it is, but looks to be some kind of Swiss. If Dude would have been here, I would have put onions and peppers and mustard on his, but I broke it in all by myself.

Yum, melty cheese. It was so good, I made another one! Well, I only had toast for breakfast, so I am sure I deserved two.

The garden is going crazy. My tomatoes have quadrupled in size in three weeks. The lettuce went so big it got a little bitter. I have cut it back to the ground to see if it will come back. The radishes are just about done and was thinking about planting more, but the zucchini and cukes are spreading to the area that the radishes were in. I picked some lettuce, onions and radishes and made a salad for Dude to bring to work today. The onions are so fragrent-I need to do something with them! Hopefully it will cool off a little tonight so I can bake. The bank thermometer said 100 degrees when I took Drama Queen to the dentist today-yuk! I much prefer it to be about 75 during the day and around 50 at night for sleeping. I need to move to that place.