Chicken salad puff pastry sandwiches

Leftover chicken = chicken salad, right?

Chicken salad is basically just cooked chopped chicken, some celery, some raw onion (I use shallots), and enough mayo to hold it together. Salt and pepper to taste. I threw in some pecans and an apple, too.

Then I took two thawed sheets of puff pastry, cut each into 6 rectangles, and baked those at 400 for 10 minutes. Layer and eat.

Warning: this is flaky and delicious. It will make a mess. A tasty mess.

Grilled cheese sandwich

The simplest thing, right? It IS possible to make a bad grilled cheese sandwich. I made a delicious one last night, with fresh-baked bread.

Start with two big slices of bread, and toast them. Meanwhile, grate some high-quality Gruyere cheese. When the bread is toasted, butter it well, on both sides, and layer the grated cheese in the middle.

Get a skillet really hot, and drop a pat of butter in. Grill the sandwich on both sides, until golden brown, and the cheese is melty.

Serve hot, with a little salad on the side, and a nice glass of wine.

The late-night wrap

I engage in quite a bit of late-night dining. Waiting tables is like that. I eat staff meal at 3 pm, and then nothing. I run my ass off for the next eight or ten hours, and then I need to eat something as I'm driving an hour home. Preferably something with protein.

These days, it's a wrap, a piece of cheese, and an apple. The wrap (Stop n' Shop-brand flour tortillas, $1.50 for 8) is filled with salad greens, maybe some nuts and/or dried fruit, and either a cooked egg or some cheese, for the protein. I roll that up, wrap it in plastic wrap, and leave it in the car--it's cold enough to do that now. I keep a water bottle in the car, too. When snack time comes, I can cover all the major food groups--I have fresh fruit, greens, dairy, and protein (eggs and cheese).

Most importantly, none of these things will make a mess in the car.

Crockpot sloppy lentils (a.k.a. vegetarian sloppy joes)

I don't know if you saw this article on the fact that 70% of supermarket ground beef contains pink slime; pink slime being ammonia-treated sludge, which takes otherwise unusable cow parts and renders them sort of edible. If you count washing things in bleach as making them edible.

Findings like this are why I don't buy supermarket ground beef anymore--that, and it doesn't taste very good.

That means I don't eat a lot of ground beef, which is fine with me. If you choose to cut back on your ground beef intake, there are plenty of substitutions--the obvious, like ground turkey and ground pork, and the less obvious, like this vegetarian version of sloppy joes made with lentils.

Even better, it's made in a crockpot.

1 tablespoon olive oil
1 onion, chopped
1 green bell pepper, diced
1 tablespoon chili powder
1 1/2 cups lentils
1 14.5 oz can tomatoes with juice
3 cups water or broth
2 tablespoons soy sauce
1 tablespoon mustard
1 tablespoon brown sugar

Saute the onion and pepper in the olive oil in a skillet until soft. Add the chili powder, stir to coat, and transfer the mixture to a crockpot. Add the rest, cover and cook on low for 6-8  hours. Salt and pepper to taste. Serve on hamburger buns, maybe with cole slaw.

Beet, goat cheese and proscuitto sandwiches

The recipe is in the title--roasted, sliced beets, goat cheese, and proscuitto, on thick homemade peasant bread.

You could add some greenery, if you have some: baby arugula or spinach, perhaps.

Avocado slices would go really well, too.

You could also throw on a fried egg.

Or some ripe tomato (not that you'll be able to get good tomatoes this time of year).

Just be sure to pack a lot of napkins in your lunch. You don't want to drop any beets on your lap.

BLT + chee

BLT + chee = BLT with goat cheese instead of mayo.

What better use of a fresh-off-the-vine yellow tomato than a fresh, homemade BLT? I used fancy applewood-smoked bacon, with baby beet greens instead of lettuce, fresh yellow tomato, and a smear of goat cheese on toasted homemade bread.

It was an AWESOME sandwich.

In fact, I see a lot of BLTs in my immediate future.