Straight from the Farm

Good to Go

December 4, 2007 at 9:56 am Jennie 4 comments

This past Saturday and Sunday were whirlwind days, not that my weekends aren’t usually pretty jammed packed.  The “jam” more routinely consists of doing work for the farm and cooking for the blog, along with the occasional friendly (though ego-stoked) poker game with the farm gang.  In all of those cases, there’s undoubtedly an abundance of food on hand, if you can categorize carrots pulled out of the ground, brushed off and chomped on right then and there as “food” (in my book it counts).  

With a close friend’s wedding and the company holiday party to attend, not to mention a meeting with the realtor and several other errands to run, I was only home for a few hours between Friday and Sunday nights.  It was thanks to these dire circumstances (perhaps it wasn’t all that bad) that I stumbled upon what might be my favorite sandwich combination to date. 

I’ve had a love/hate affair with sandwiches over the past few years.  I wasn’t so fond of them as a kid.  My mom was a great cook and rarely fell back on sandwiches except for fast lunches in the busy summer season or when we had to scurry out of the diary barn in the evening to take lick-itty split showers and eat on the drive to some school function.  I guess because sandwiches were always just purely functional and never an “art” during my rearing, they only consisted of two thin slices of white bread, a piece of highly processed lunchmeat and another of plain American cheese (or maybe Swiss on a good day).  

Even though I was in a hurry, I took time to snap a pretty picture
just for you guys before grabbing this and running out the door. 

Fast forward to my first wide-eyed (I kid you not) country mouse in the big city encounter with an eggplant parmesan sandwich at Mama Palma’s.  I was smitten.  My love of sandwiches thrived for a few years until sometime last winter.  I did a silly thing.  I wanted to beat the after-holidays bulge and decided I’d do so by eating nothing but two veggie burgers on whole wheat toast with mustard every day (plus yogurt and granola for breakfast).  After nearly two months of this routine, I could hardly look another veggie burger in the face without an involuntary turn of my stomach.  Blech.  I’ve had very few sandwiches since.

All of this brings us to this past weekend.  I was starving.  S-T-A-R-V-I-N-G!  I was also on the run.  I eyed the contents of my fridge and the loaf of fresh local baguette that I’d just gotten from my quick visit to the Headhouse Market (sadly much diminished from the farm’s last day there a few weeks ago).  A sandwich it would be, made with the sharp local cheddar from HillAcres Pride, a few slices of soy bacon, and a very generous slather of the pear butter I’d put up with my gal pals earlier this fall. 

Oh my.  Goodness me.  I think I might be back on the sandwich bandwagon.   It’s not groundbreaking, this sandwich making.  But it is a reminder that even in these dark cold days, delicious fresh local eating can still be had, even if it is on the go. 

Entry filed under: Preserves, Recipes, Veggies w/ Protein. Tags: cooking, food, photography, recipe, sandwich.