Hard to get healthier than this!

After a weekend of over-indulgence, I’m always in the mood for something that’s really quick and healthy.

I definitely don’t want anything with meat or cheese in it. For once.

This recipe was inspired by a recipe that was in the most recent Bon Appetit. I say inspired because I changed almost every main ingredient except chickpeas. The original had chicken in it, but I felt like keeping it veggie packed so I nixed the chicken and added in a few potatoes and some kale.

The bonus piece of cutting out the chicken is that it also trims about 20 minutes off of your prep time.

Thirty Minute Chickpea Stew

Yield: Serves 4.

Prep Time: 10 minutes

Total Time: 30 minutes

Ingredients:

2 15-ounce cans chickpeas, drained and rinsed
1 1/2 pounds potatoes, peeled and cubed
1 small bunch kale leaves, chopped
1 quart vegetable stock
1/2 cup roasted red peppers, chopped
1/4 cup olive oil
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
2 bay leaves
3 tablespoons tomato paste
2 tablespoons ground cumin
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
Crusty bread
Salt and pepper

Directions:

1) Add olive oil to a large heavy pot over medium-low heat. Add minced garlic and red pepper flakes. Cook for a few minutes until fragrant.

2) Add in cubed potatoes, tomato paste, and cumin. Turn the heat up to medium and cook for 5 minutes, stirring regularly.

3) Add in vegetable stock, chickpeas, bay leaves, roasted red peppers, and a pinch of salt and pepper. Bring to a simmer and simmer until potatoes are soft, another 10 minutes.

4) Stir in kale and lemon juice. Season with salt and pepper.

5) Break up some crusty bread in the bottom of a bowl. Ladle stew over bread. Serve immediately.

A Basic Stew

I think one of the best things you can learn as an at-home cook is to master the simple veggie stew. Learn how to balance the spices and flavors in a stew and you can usually make a fantastic meal with a few fresh veggies, a few canned foods, and some simple stock and spices.

For this version (and for a lot of stews that I make), these are some of the basics.

Just some basics.

I was worried that by cutting out the chicken, my stew wouldn’t have enough body to be really filling. I’m not sure if that’s entirely true because there’s still bread in the soup also.

But, I decided to add in a few chopped potatoes at the last minute.

I liked the potato addition, but I also think it would’ve worked fine without them.

Gives the stew some body.

Canned chickpeas makes this stew super-quick. It would add on at least an hour to use dried chickpeas and I’m not sure you would get much for your extra work.

Just be sure to drain and rinse the chickpeas well.

I think I’m almost in the market for a new strainer…

Rinse these guys pretty well.

Making the Stew

To start the stew, we need to infuse some oil with two really flavorful things: garlic and red pepper flakes.

Two of my favorite things.

The key to doing this correctly is cooking the garlic and pepper flakes over fairly low heat for a few minutes. If you crank the heat to high, you’ll completely char the garlic.

Instead, just add them to the olive oil over medium-low heat for a few minutes. When it starts to get really fragrant, you know it’s ready to go. The garlic shouldn’t even be browned really.

Low heat is important..

Next, add in the potatoes, tomato paste, and cumin.

This will immediately start to smell amazing. Stir it all together and let it cook for a few minutes. You can turn your heat up a bit to medium at this point.

Already smellin' good.

After a few minutes of that, just pour in the vegetable stock, add the bay leaves and chickpeas, and bring the whole thing to a simmer.

At this point the stew is pretty much done when the potatoes are cooked through which will probably take another 10 minutes or so.

Love that color...

Finishing the Stew

There’s a few ingredients to add to the end of the stew that completely make it in my opinion. First, roasted red peppers. Honestly, I’m not sure that I’ve ever had roasted red peppers in a stew before but they worked great and paired really well with the chickpeas.

Next, I added some chopped kale. You could also use something like swiss chard if you wanted. A leafy, sturdy green really helps the stew out though.

One of the most important ingredients is lemon juice. The acid just makes all the flavors really pop. Don’t forget it!

Gotta toss in some greens.

Once all that stuff is stirred in, just season it with salt and pepper and you’re ready to go.

This stew took me about 30 minutes to make and I was taking photos and stuff. You could probably make it even faster!

Serving the Stew

The stew tastes good as-is, but to really turn it into a meal, just put about 1/2 cup of torn bread into the bottom of your bowl before you serve it. Any super-crusty and slightly stale bread will work great.

Hidden bread!

Then just ladle on the stew with some of the broth and you’re all set.

Hard to beat in my opinion.

Betsy and I devoured this and we had plenty for leftovers also.

Give this a shot this week if you are crunched for time and looking for something healthy and filling!

See what I did there?

Sometimes indecision can lead to greatness.

For example, I love John Stewart’s Indecision election coverage. He always makes it very clear how much of a hot mess politics can be on both sides of the old aisle.

I’m not so indecisive about politics though.

I’m more indecisive about sandwiches.

On this occasion I was torn between making a grilled cheese sandwich or a club sandwich. My indecisiveness led me to just smack them together and call it good. And trust me, it was really good.

Grilled Cheese Club

Yield: 1 sandwich

Prep Time: 20 minutes

Total Time: 20 minutes

Ingredients:

3 pieces of bread
2-3 ounces Monterey Jack cheese, grated or sliced
1 chipotle pepper, diced
1 tablespoon salsa
1/2 avocado, sliced
2 slices bacon, crispy
Cilantro
Butter

Directions:

1) Butter two pieces of bread. Slice or grate the cheese and dice up the chipotle. Cook bacon either in a pan until crispy or on a wire rack in a 350 degree oven until crispy, about 15 minutes.

2) In a small skillet, add one piece of buttered bread, butter side down. Top with cheese, pepper and salsa. Top with other piece of buttered bread, butter side up.

3) Cook grilled cheese over medium heat for about 6-8 minutes, flipping occasionally until bread is browned and cheese is well-melted.

4) Toast other piece of bread. Top with bacon, sliced avocado, and cilantro.

5) When grilled cheese is done, add entire sandwich to the top of the open-faced part of the sandwich.

6) Slice and serve immediately!

A Tex-Mex Flair

When slapping together a grilled cheese sandwich and a club sandwich, almost any toppings will work. This is more a post about a simple idea rather than an exact recipe.

I decided to go with a tex-mex version though with chipotle peppers, cilantro, avocado, and salsa. Feel free to adapt to your tastes.

Some of my personal favorite flavors.

The Grilled Cheese

You might ask why I wouldn’t just shove all the ingredients into one grilled cheese sandwich.

The answer is two-fold. First, I don’t think they would all easily fit. Second, things are just better when they are stacked. Take my word for it.

The grilled cheese sandwich itself is pretty basic. I always recommend buttering the bread for a grilled cheese, but you don’t necessarily have to go as heavy on the butter as I do. I have a heavy butter hand – no question.

Butta that bread.

Add one slice of bread, butter side down, into a small skillet and then top with cheese, diced chipotle pepper and salsa. If you want to not have it be super-spicy, leave out the chipotle and just use some salsa.

Also, your cheese will melt easier if it’s grated. I didn’t grate mine on this occasion because I just plain forgot.

Some spicy stuff.

Cover this with the other piece of bread (butter side up) and cook it over medium heat until the cheese is melted and the bread is nice and brown. It’ll probably take about 8 minutes.

The key with cooking a grilled cheese is not to cook it over high heat. If you do, the bread will brown before the heat has time to transfer through to the cheese and you’ll end up with a burned sandwich.

Just keep it over medium heat and flip it every few minutes and you should be good to go.

The Club Section

I just couldn’t make a club sandwich without bacon. It’s not to say that you couldn’t, but I couldn’t.

I like to bake my bacon in the oven on a wire rack at 350 degrees so it gets nice and crispy.

The only way to do bacon.

Toast your third piece of bread and then add your bacon to the bread.

You’ll also need to slice up some avocado and grab a few cilantro leaves. I went heavy on the cilantro because I wanted a lot of herb flavor, but use it to your tastes which for some people is not at all.

Sandwich building 101.

Stack the avocado slices and cilantro right on top of the bacon. Notice that I didn’t put down any mayo or anything. You don’t really need it for this sandwich because the avocado has a creamy texture to it and there’s lots of cheese in the grilled cheese half.

Half of a sandwich.

Putting it all together

This isn’t rocket science, but I was pretty giddy while making it.

When your grilled cheese is done, it’s as simple as plopping it right on top of your club sandwich half.

Stacked up!

Slice it up so it’s easier to eat and you’re good to go.

I just love the layers in this bad boy. It was really good.

This worked.

This might be a bit more complicated than a normal grilled cheese, but it’s also more filling and has some really complex flavors which I liked.

The thing that takes the most time for the recipe is actually cooking the bacon. If you’re rushed you could leave it out or sub it with deli meat or something.

While indecision created this lovely thing, you should be decisive about making it as soon as possible.

Fun and tasty!

Finding fun ways to use leftover bread is a small hobby of mine. That said, a guy can only make so many impromptu bread puddings!

Croutons are a classic use of leftover bread, but it hit me a few days ago that these could be easily adapted to a breakfast thing by making them sweet instead of savory.

The resulting croutons are these slightly sweet crispy cubes that taste almost exactly like cinnamon toast crunch. They are sturdier though and stay pretty crunchy in milk (at least for a few minutes).

This makes them a really fun topper for cereals! They were really tasty sprinkled on my morning granola.

Cinnamon Crunch Croutons

Yield: Makes 2-3 cups.

Prep Time: 5 minutes

Total Time: 30 minutes

Ingredients:

2-3 cups leftover bread, cubed
1/4 cup butter, melted
3-4 tablespoons sugar
2 teaspoons cinnamon

Directions:

1) Cube bread into 1/4 inch cubes. Lay bread cubes out on a baking sheet lined with foil and bake for 10 minutes at 325 degrees to lightly dry out the bread.

2) Melt butter in the microwave. Toss the dried bread cubes with the butter until the bread is well coated. Sprinkle in 2 Tablespoons of sugar and 1 teaspoon of cinnamon and toss bread with cinnamon and sugar.

3) Return bread to baking dish and sprinkle with extra cinnamon and sugar to coat well.

4) Bake for 15-20 more minutes at 325. Turn the croutons once or twice while cooking.

5) Let croutons cool completely to make them extra-crispy.

6) Use croutons as a topping for cereal or granola!

The Bread To Use

I’m almost positive that you can use pretty much any bread you want for this recipe. Ok… maybe not something super-savory like rye bread, but mosts sandwich breads or crusty loaves will work perfectly.

Ideally, it would be a little on the stale side even. Once you’ve picked your leftover bread of choice, just cube it up! Shoot for smallish cubes here. About 1/4 inch is a good goal.

Any bread will do.

The Pre Bake

Eventually we will be tossing these guys with butter and cinnamon and sugar, but for now we want to dry them out a bit to firm them up and make them easier to coat.

So just scoop them onto a baking sheet lined with foil and bake them for about 10 minutes at 325 degrees. It should just dry them out a bit.

Just lightly toasted.

The Butta

Normally, I use olive oil for croutons, but I couldn’t help substituting butter since it’s a breakfast/sweet style crouton.

Melt your butter and pour it into a good tossing bowl.

Sweet sweet butter.

Then just add in your dried bread cubes and toss them together so they are well-coated with butter.

At this point, also add in about half of your cinnamon and sugar and toss that together to get a good base on the croutons.

A light butter coating...

The Final Bake

Return the croutons back to the baking sheet and spread them out in a single layer. Then hit them with more cinnamon and sugar. I recommend going pretty heavy on it since some will fall off while baking and also you want these to have lots of flavor since you’ll just add a few to your breakfast.

A liberal sprinkle.

Now return these to the oven and bake them for another 15 minutes. Give them a stir halfway through just to make sure they are cooking evenly.

They should be nice and crispy, not too browned, but lightly browned.

These are just about perfect.

Nice and crispy.

I added a handful of these to my morning granola and I loved it! It gave it a nice, slightly sweet flavor and the texture is awesome.

Tastes just like the cereal... except sturdier.

I was a bit worried that these would immediately turn to mush in a bowl of cereal, but they actually stayed crispier longer than normal cereal does.

I think these might be really fun for kids although I don’t actually have kids… so I can’t confirm!

As an adult who considers himself a big kid, I really liked them.

A mess of awesome.

Have you ever had something that you know you should be doing regularly but you just can’t find time to get to it? I call this my procrastithing. I have many of them.

I think most people would say their procrastithing is something like going to the gym.

I have a bunch, but one of my procrastithings these days is listening to The Splendid Table podcast. That might sound ridiculous, but as a food blogger, it’s something that I should really be listening to every week. For some reason though, I have a hard time finding the time.

Of course, every time I do listen to it, I freakin’ love it. They talk about everything I want to hear about. I especially like the part of every show where listeners call in with super-random food or cooking questions and the host, Lynn, always has an amazing answer for every problem.

Recently, a guy called in and said something like, “I’m cooking brunch for 50 people. It needs to be filling, fast, hot, and all that good stuff.” It was a tough one. Her answer was something I had never thought of: Savory bread pudding.

As soon as the words came out of my speakers, I knew I had to make it.

Savory Bread Pudding

Yield: 8x8 dish.

Prep Time: 15 minutes

Total Time: 1 hour 15 minutes + Chill Time

Ingredients:

4-5 pieces of stale bread, torn into large pieces
1.5-2 cups various cheeses, I used cheddar and goat cheese
1-2 cups vegetables, I used a roasted red pepper and 1/2 an onion
4 large eggs
2 cups milk
1 Tablespoon butter, for dish
Pinch of nutmeg
Salt and pepper

Directions:

1) Butter an 8x8 baking dish. Tear pieces of stale bread into large chunks and layer them in the buttered dish. If you don't have any really stale bread, toast your bread for 10 minutes in a 300 degree oven to dry it out.

2) Add any sort of grated or crumbled cheese to the top of the bread until it just barely covers the bread. Two cups will be more than enough. I used a mix of cheddar and goat cheese.

3) Add a few handfuls of leftover veggies (or meat) to the dish. You can use almost any fresh vegetable. I used a roasted red pepper and 1/2 an onion.

4) In a separate bowl, whisk together eggs and milk and pour the mixture over the bread and vegetables.

5) Cover the dish and let it rest for at least 15 minutes or up to overnight in the fridge.

6) Season the dish with salt and pepper and a tiny pinch of ground nutmeg.

7) Bake the dish at 350 degrees covered for 20 minutes and then uncovered for 30 minutes. The dish is done when the custard in the center are set.

8) Let cool for a minute or two and then serve immediately!

Recipe adapted from a Splendid Table recipe.

What the Custard?

Just like any bread pudding, you need a good custard. Depending on the size of your dish and how much bread you have on hand, you might need more or less custard than the recipe above.

Always shoot for two eggs for every one cup of milk. That’ll make for a really good custard.

Just milk and eggs, baby.

Just whisk the eggs with the milk and set it aside until you need it.

The Pudding Parts

The best part about this recipe is its flexibility. I’ve only made it once, but I could tell immediately that you can put almost anything in it. You can use almost any kind of bread, any kind of cheese, and any kind of vegetable.

It’s the perfect leftover dish.

The one key to the dish is to make sure you have really stale bread. This will make sure that the bread can absorb a lot of the custard mixture. If you don’t have stale bread, no big deal. Just stick your bread in a 300 degree oven for about 10 minutes and it’ll dry it out quickly.

Then just break your bread into pieces and layer it into the bottom of a buttered baking dish.

Then cover the bread with whatever cheese you’re using. I went with cheddar and some goat cheese I have left over from my macaroni and (goat) cheese recipe.

Toast that bread if it isn't really stale.

The Vegetables

As I mentioned, you can shove almost any veggies you have around (cooked or raw) in this dish. I went with 1/2 an onion and a roasted red pepper. I’m having a hard time thinking of something you couldn’t put in this though. Almost anything goes.

Just dice up whatever veggies you want to use and toss them on.

You can use almost any veggie.

Then just pour your custard mixture right into your dish!

Action shot!

Give it a Rest

It’s very important to let this dish sit for at least 15 minutes, but ideally an hour, before baking it. You could make it the night before you needed it and just stick it in the fridge overnight. That would be fantastic.

When you are ready to bake it, season it well with salt and pepper and a pinch of ground nutmeg. The nutmeg will really bring out the cheese flavors. It works well, trust me.

Nutmeg is a secret ingredient.

Baking the Dish

Bake this awesome thing at 350 degrees. I recommend baking it for 20 minutes covered in foil and then uncovered for about 30 minutes or until the custard is set in the middle. It should get slightly crusty and browned around the edges.

This will make your house smell awesome!

Let this rest for a few minutes once it comes out of the oven and then scoop into it.

It’s absolutely packed with flavor.

This is a really great dish.

I could easily see how you could feed a bunch of people with this method. Just make these the day before the event and toss them all in the oven.

Done deal.

Does anyone else listen to The Splendid Table podcast? They do good work!

I don't recommend the grilled cheese approach.

This idea started as a sandwich and it ended as a sandwich. A very messy sandwich as you can see. A sandwich that I wouldn’t really recommend you make unless you own stock in a napkin company.

I had dreams of making a creamy pumpkin grilled cheese sandwich, but cream cheese doesn’t do a great job of holding together when it gets hot so the whole thing kind of just melted all over the place. Don’t get me wrong though… it was very tasty! I had no problem scarfing it all down, but it’s definitely easier to just use it as a spread.

Pumpkin Cream Cheese Spread

Yield: 1 Cup

Prep Time: 10 minutes

Total Time: 10 minutes

Ingredients:

1/2 Cup canned pumpkin (not pumpkin pie filling)
1/2 cup cream cheese
2 Tablespoons honey
1 orange, zest only
Pinch of chili powder
Pinch of salt

Helpful Equipment:
- Zester

Directions:

1) Mash pumpkin and cream cheese together in a small bowl.

2) Stir in honey, spices, and orange zest.

3) Use on toast, bagels, or almost any baked good.

Making the Spread

You could go the complete sweet route with this spread by mixing in standard pumpkin pie spices (cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, etc.), but I decided to give it a slightly different flavor with some chili powder and orange zest.

Orange isn't optional.

It’s very important when making spreads like this to make sure you get just canned pumpkin. You don’t want the canned pumpkin pie filling with lots of crap in it. If you’re in doubt, take a look at the ingredients. They should only have pumpkin listed. Nothing else.

Once you pop your can open just mix the cream cheese and pumpkin together really well. I just used a fork and kind of mashed it all together.

These two things play nice together.

It’s okay if there are some lumps. The only way to get rid of those would be to beat the mixture with a hand mixer or something and that’s more work than it’s worth in my opinion.

Once your base mixture is mixed, you can add in your spices. The orange zest really makes the whole thing pop so try not to leave it out.

Then just add a pinch of chili powder and salt to taste. The finished spread should be a lovely light orange color.

Well that turned out bright!

Honestly, I recommend stopping here. Use the spread like this for toast, bagels, or heck. Just eat it with a spoon if you want. It’s really delicious.

But if you want to venture into the world of the messy, I have a sandwich for you!

The Pumpkin Sandwich

The key with this sandwich, if you are daring enough to try it out, is to do the exact opposite of what you would normally do with a grilled cheese. Normally, I recommend cooking grilled cheeses on medium-low heat which lets the bread toast slowly while the heat radiates into the cheese, melting it.

If you do that with this sandwich, you’ll have a huge mess on your hands.

Instead, you want to cook the sandwich on a high heat for about 45 seconds per side. That will toast the bread nicely, and just warm through the filling.

Butter a piece of bread and set it in a hot skillet. Add a few dollops of pumpkin spread to the bread.

Work quickly!

Top it with another piece of buttered bread (butter side up) and set it over medium-high heat. After about 45 seconds, carefully flip the sandwich and you should have a lovely browned toast.

Cook it for another 45 seconds and your done. If you do it right, none of the pumpkin mixture will spill out.

Hot and quick!

Let this cool for a minute before eating it. I cut mine in half just so you could see the runny (but delicious) mess that this sandwich is capable of.

Just spread it on, people.

By all means make the pumpkin spread in this post. It’s very Fall-ish. It would go great on a huge number of breakfast foods.

Maybe don’t try to do what I did with the whole sandwich thing. If you wanted a sandwich you could always just toast two pieces of bread and stick them together with some spread in the middle!

Don’t make something delicious harder than it needs to be.

Whoa. Cool.

Ever since I was experimenting with (read: eating a lot of) my PB & J sushi last week, I’ve been on a huge peanut butter and jelly kick. I’ve eaten a peanut butter and jelly sandwich every day of the week for the last ten days or so.

Call it sappy, but it really does remind me of my childhood. These days I leave the ends on, but other than that it’s the same old sandwich.

Of course, I can’t help myself when it comes to thinking of ways to ramp up something that I like that much.

So I figured it would be fun to make an actual bread loaf with peanut butter and jelly rolled right into it. Then any slice of toast is, like, an instant peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

How could you not like that!

Peanut Butter and Jelly Loaf

Yield: 9 Inch Loaf

Prep Time: 15 minutes + 16 hour rise time

Total Time: 1 hour 10 minutes

Ingredients:

2 1/4 Cups bread flour, plus some for dusting
1 Teaspoon kosher salt
1/3 Teaspoon instant yeast
1 Cup + 2 Tablespoons cool water
1/4 Cup unsalted smooth peanut butter
1 large egg
1/3 Cup seedless jam
1/2 Cup peanuts, chopped and divided

Egg Wash:
1 egg + 1 Tablespoon water

Helpful Equipment:
Loaf pan
Wire Rack

Directions:

1) Mix dry ingredients (flour yeast salt) together in a large bowl.

2) In a blender or food processor, pulse peanut butter together with water and egg until mixture is smooth.

3) Add wet mixture to dry stuff and stir to combine. It should be a pretty wet, sticky dough.

4) Cover dough loosely and let rise for 12-16 hours.

5) Dust dough with flour after it rises and dust a clean surface with flour as well. Turn out dough onto surface and shape it or roll it into a large rectangle (about 8x12).

6) Spread jam all over surface of dough, leaving about 1/2 inch around the edges.

7) Fold the bottom 1/3 of the dough over and then continue to roll the dough up to form a jelly roll of sorts.

8) To prep your loaf pan, butter it well and sprinkle the bottom with half of your peanuts.

9) When jelly roll is finished, tuck the ends under and place it seam-side down in your loaf pan. Cover it and let it rise for another hour.

10) Brush the loaf with egg wash and sprinkle the rest of the chopped peanuts on top.

11) Bake loaf at 450 degrees for 50-60 minutes. Remove from pan as soon as possible and let cool on a wire rack.

Adapted from My Bread.

Starting the bread

The nice thing about this loaf is that it’s based on a no knead bread recipe from Jim Lahey.

Which means that it takes almost no time to make, but it does require about 12-16 hours to rise.

Normal stuff plus awesome stuff.

Ingeniously, Jim recommends mixing the peanut butter in with the no knead dough which gives it a really nice peanut butter flavor and also a soft texture.

Unfortunately, it’s kind of tricky mixing peanut butter into flour. The easiest way to do it is to blend your peanut butter, water, and egg together to make a sort of slurry and then mix that together with your dry ingredients.

This will smell really peanuty which is good!

Dough is gonna rise.

Once your dough is mixed together, it should be pretty moist. Just stir it together until everything is mixed. No need to over-mix it.

Then cover it loosely with plastic wrap and let it sit at room temperature for 12-16 hours. It should double in volume.

Forming the Loaf

Once your dough has risen, dust it well with flour and also throw some flour down on a clean surface. Then scoop out your dough onto the floured surface and lightly roll it into a large rectangle.

You’re shooting for a rectangle that’s about 8×12 in size.

Then spread your jam all over the surface of the dough!

Needs a bit more jelly...

Try to leave about a 1/2 inch around the edge of the dough.

Fold the bottom third of the dough up and then continue to roll the dough away from you to form a tight jelly roll of dough.

Roll 'er up!

To prepare your loaf pan for baking, butter it liberally so the dough doesn’t stick and then sprinkle about 1/4 cup of roughly chopped peanuts right in the bottom of the pan.

See what I did there?

Once you have your loaf rolled up, fold under the ends to form a nice even loaf. Then just plop the roll right into your loaf pan with the seam-side down. That’ll prevent most of your jelly from exploding out of the loaf.

Loosely cover the loaf and let it rise for another hour or so. It should again double in size.

Then brush the loaf with a light egg wash (1 egg + 1 tablespoon water) and sprinkle on another 1/4 cup of chopped peanuts.

This guy is ready for the oven now!

Ready for the oven.

Bake the loaf in a pre-heated 450 degree oven for about 50 minutes. The loaf should be really nice and golden brown. If it isn’t, then bake for another 10 minutes.

Check the loaf halfway through and if the peanuts are browning really quickly (mine were) then cover the loaf pan loosely with foil which will keep them out of the direct heat.

The final loaf is a thing of beauty!

This will smell amazing.

Two things to note about this loaf:

1) It’s inevitable that some jelly will escape from the roll. When you pull your loaf pan out it might look as if a lot of jelly has cooked out of it. Have no fear. It’s probably fine as long as you rolled it tightly and cooked it with the seam side down.

2) When you pull the loaf out of the oven, immediately invert it on a pan or wire rack to get the loaf out of the pan. If you let it cool in the pan, it’ll turn really soggy. Ideally, you can cool it on a rack, but whatever you do, take it out of the pan as soon as possible.

This was my final loaf. As you can see, some jelly escaped, but it was still delicious.

Cool it down.

Getting Crazy

As soon as I cut open the loaf and saw the cool jelly swirl, I knew this was a keeper of a recipe.

Of course, I had to take it to the next level as soon as possible and make a double peanut butter and jelly!

Double PB & J Slam!

What do you think about that?!

There’s a very important caveat to note before I get started with this post:

I do not have children.

I have a cat and a dog and they are more than enough for me to handle at this point in my life. But that doesn’t mean that I can’t COOK stuff for kids right?

I’ve been watching the last season of Food Revolution (sound) on Hulu during my lunch breaks and it’s pretty devastating to see what is called “lunch” at some schools in the U.S. How we expect kids to learn and grow while feeding them bad food is a mystery to me.

What you put in is what you get out.

But, I understand that it must be hard to feed children. I wasn’t a picky eater when I was a kid, but my sister definitely was and I remember watching my mom struggle to get a vegetable into her mouth.

At the same time, I think kids eat first with their eyes. If something looks fun, they are a lot more likely to try it out. So I came up with three fun ways to spice up the normal packed lunch that might make your kid more likely to, say, try a carrot.

This is all about presentation. It’s all the same stuff in a normal sandwich, but if your kid will only eat peanut butter and jelly this might be a way to get them to try out some other things.

It’s a scientific fact that food is more fun when it’s on a stick. That applies to sandwiches also! This takes about the same amount of time to make as a sandwich and just looks fun to eat. You could include a few little containers of ketchup and mustard for dipping sauces. Also, almost anything would work on these sticks.

Note: Betsy made the very astute observation that kids might not be allowed to have pointy sticks at school. If that’s the case, I think you could break off the pointy ends and be okay.

This one is a leap of faith really. My hope is that it looks so fun, that kids will want to eat it. It has lots vegetables in it though, which I hear is like arsenic for most children.

All you need for the sandwich is a tiny cookie cutter and some green, orange or yellow, and red veggies. Then just strategically place them on the sandwich and you’re all set.

You can put other stuff on the sandwich also (cheese, turkey, etc.), but just make sure the veggies and the bread with holes in it line up.

Easy!

I got this idea from a site called Planning with Kids and I thought it was just really fun.

I would’ve loved to open my lunchbox as a kid and see this sandwich.

The right way.

OK. Let’s talk about dessert.

A peanut butter and jelly sandwich is one of my favorite treats to this day. I still frequently have one for dessert.

I like to think of them as dessert instead of as a meal though which is why this sushi recipe works so well. You can include four or five little bites along with something really healthy and hopefully convey to the little ones that they are supposed to eat them last.

These might look tricky, but they are pretty easy to make actually. There are three keys to making these work:

1) Cut off the ends on the bread. It just makes it roll easier. I’m sure your kids will like this.

As I always asked my Mom growing up, “Mom, why do they even make bread with ends on it?”

2) Roll the bread thin (Upper right photo below). It’ll be easier to roll if it isn’t all puffy.

3) Go light on the PB & J. Otherwise it’ll just be messy. A very thin layer of both is more than enough.

Be sure to roll up the rolls pretty tightly so they stay formed and, if you have one, cut the rolls with a serrated knife so they cut cleanly.

These are just super-fun.

From above!

I ate all of these for lunch as I made them and I liked all of them!

Of course, that’s not the test though. The test is children. I figured it would be kind of creepy for me to go handing out my lunches at the local elementary school so none of these have been officially tested.

If you have kids, leave a comment and let me know if you think your kids would actually EAT any of these! If you try one out, even better.

School lunch photo by Chidorian.

Three ingredients. Delicious.

Sometimes an idea for a dish smacks me across the face and I can’t shake it until I make it. Even if I think that it might be an awful idea.

That happened with this sandwich. I was pretty certain that it wouldn’t work and that it would taste weird. But I just couldn’t not make it.

Turns out that my stubbornness paid off for once because it was one of the best sandwiches I’ve made. Only three ingredients needed!

Apple Butter Breakfast Sandwich

Yield: 2 sandwiches

Prep Time: 20 minutes

Total Time: 25 minutes

Ingredients:

4 slices of good sandwich bread, toasted
Bacon, 3 strips per sandwich is good
4 eggs, over easy
Butter, to cook the eggs
Apple butter, for sandwich
Salt and pepper

Directions:

1) Cook bacon. I like to cook it on a wire rack in the oven at 350 degrees for about 20 minutes until it's really crispy.

2) Toast bread and slather with apple butter.

3) Top with bacon.

4) Add a teaspoon of butter to a non stick skillet over medium high heat.

5) Once melted and bubbling, add two eggs. Cook for a few minutes on side one and then flip.

6) Cook for a few seconds on side two and top sandwich with eggs.

7) Eat immediately!

Three Ingredients

There are really only three ingredients to this bad boy besides bread. One of them you just buy unless you feel like making your own apple butter.

So that leaves us with bacon and eggs to cook. So let’s make sure to do them right.

The best way to cook bacon, in my opinion, is in the oven, on a wire rack over a sheet pan at around 350 degrees.

The right way to cook bacon.

Add a good amount of fresh ground pepper to the bacon and let these cook for about 20 minutes or until they are nice and crispy.

The benefit of cooking the bacon this way is that it stays really nice and straight and the grease drips away from the bacon as it cooks which makes it really crispy.

It’s bacon perfection.

Crispy and perfect.

The Apple Butter

Apple butter isn’t a very common ingredient, but there are a few different kinds in the store normally. You can find it in the jelly section and be sure to look at the ingredients in your apple butter.

Good apple butter will contain exactly two ingredients:

- Apples
- Apple juice or concentrate

Don’t get anything with added sugar or high fructose corn syrup. It’ll be too sweet. Just get the real stuff even if it costs an extra buck or two. Completely worth it.

Get the good stuff.

Once your bread is toasted you can slather one side with a good amount of the apple butter.

It’s pretty hard to over-do it so do a nice thick layer.

Healthy butter!

Then pile on that nice crispy bacon right on top of the apple butter.

Three strips should do the trick.

A bacon layer never hurts.

The Eggs

Anytime I’m putting eggs on a sandwich, I always cook them the same way: fried over-easy. There’s really no other way to make them in my opinion.

Assuming you have a decent non-stick pan, just add about a teaspoon of butter to it over medium-high heat. Once the butter is melted and bubbling, crack in a few eggs and let them cook on side one for a minute or two.

Use real butter. Not apple butter.

The whites should be mostly cooked before flipping them. Once you flip them, cook them for only 15-20 seconds on side two or you’ll run the risk of over-cooking the eggs which is possibly the worst thing in the world.

Then add your eggs right on top of the bacon. Two eggs per sandwich. Don’t wuss out and just use one.

BOOM!

I like to cut my sandwich in half which makes it easier to eat and prettier to photograph.

Delish.

There’s something really wonderful about the slightly sweet apple butter flavor, the crispy salty bacon, and the creamy egg.

It’s seriously one of the best breakfast sandwiches I’ve had.

Sometimes a few ingredients is all it takes.

Can I interest you in the best sandwich ever?

Betsy and I used to be big time sandwich people for lunch. In my opinion, you can put almost anything on a sandwich and it’ll probably be decent as long as one thing is really good: The bread.

If I get a sandwich and it’s made with some crappy flimsy bread, I just don’t care for it. I want my bread sturdy and ready for tons of condiments and toppings. I want to be able to wrap it up and eat it a few hours later without worrying about it falling apart.

We’re getting back into sandwiches these days after a brief stint in a quinoa salad and/or wheat berry salad phase.

So I took this as an opportunity to work on my sandwich breads.

These big, thin, sturdy loaves called stecca or “stick” turned out to make for some of the best sandwich bread I’ve had!

Stecca Sandwich Bread

Yield: 4 loafs

Prep Time: 10 minutes

Total Time: 1 hour 15 minutes + rise time

Ingredients:

3 Cups (400 grams) bread flour
1 Teaspoon kosher salt
1 Teaspoon sugar
1/4 Teaspoon yeast (instant or active dry is fine)
1 1/2 Cups cool water (55-65 degrees F.)
Additional flour, olive oil, and kosher salt for dusting

Directions:

1) Combine flour, sugar, salt, and yeast in a large bowl. Stir in water until combined. It should be a pretty wet dough.

2) Let sit, covered, for 12-18 hours.

3) Scrape dough onto a well-floured surface. Work the dough a bit by folding it over itself. After a few folds, form a loose ball with the dough.

4) Add the dough to a well-floured towel, seam side down. Drizzle dough with olive oil and top with a pinch of kosher salt.

5) Cover dough ball and let rise for 2 hours.

6) Cut dough into 4 equal parts. Lightly oil two 18 inch sheet pans.

7) Form 4 long, thin loaves with each quarter of dough. The loaves should be a few inches across and fairly thin. Don't worry about them being all the same though.

8) Drizzle each loaf with a bit more olive oil and another small pinch of salt. Let them rise again for 30 minutes.

9) Bake in a pre-heated 500 degree oven for 15-25 minutes until the loaves are golden brown. Mine took about 20 minutes.

10) Let cool for at least 30 minutes before eating.

11) To store, let cool completely, then wrap in plastic wrap and store in the fridge.

Adapted from My Bread.

The Dough

This dough comes together just like the normal loaf of no knead bread would. It takes maybe 60 seconds to get it ready, but it does need to sit for 12-18 hours before you can continue with the recipe. So a bit of planning is necessary unfortunately.

Don’t worry though, you’ll be well-rewarded for your planning efforts.

Start by mixing the flour, sugar, salt, and yeast in a large bowl. Add in the water and stir to combine. The dough should be very loose. It should be too wet to knead even if you wanted to.

This is what mine looked like after about 15 seconds of stirring.

No knead necessary!

Cover this with plastic wrap and let it sit for at least 12 hours.

During that time, the slow fermentation will basically knead the dough for you as the gases work through the dough.

You’ll come back to a dough that’s more than double in volume and very soft. It’ll be really wet, more wet than when you left it because the flour is now completely relaxed.

These are all good things.

After a night...

Shaping the Loaves

So now that you have this big bowl of dough, let’s make some great sandwich bread.

The thing to remember when working with this dough is that you’ll need to use a good amount of flour to make sure you can work with it. Otherwise, it’ll be too sticky.

So sprinkle a good amount of flour on a work surface. Then scrape out the dough from the bowl and turn it over itself a few times. Kind of press it down, then fold over the edges. Just do this a few times until you have a rough ball of dough that holds its shape. It shouldn’t take more than a minute.

Transfer this dough ball to a kitchen towel that’s been floured also. Once the dough is on the towel with the seam side down, drizzle it with olive oil and sprinkle it with a pinch of kosher salt.

Don't worry about this part.

Cover this with the towel and let it rise again for 2 hours.

When this rise is done, take the dough and cut it into four even pieces. If you want to get exact, you could weigh them, but I kind of just went by sight.

Lightly oil two 18 inch baking sheets. Take each quarter of dough and stretch or roll it out to fit the length of the pan. So each piece of dough will stretch to 18 inches and should be a few inches across. It’s fine if they are very thin at this point.

Also, don’t worry about the loaves being perfectly uniform. Go for the rustic look.

Once the loaves are shaped, drizzle them with a bit more olive oil and salt and let them rise again for 30 minutes.

Don't worry about this part either.

Baking and Sandwich Making

Bake these guys in a preheated in a 500 degree oven for 15-25 minutes. You might need to rotate the pans if they are looking like they are cooking unevenly.

Mine took about 20 minutes before they were golden brown on the top.

Really good.

I was worried that mine were getting burned on the bottom, but it turned out to be perfect.

This was what the bottoms looked like after 20 minutes.

The backside.

After you let these cool for at least 30 minutes, you can chop into them.

Mine had a beautiful crumb structure. Perfect for sandwiches!

Some of the best I've made!

Betsy likes turkey, but I was on a pastrami kick last week.

One loaf of the bread makes two really big sandwiches actually.

As you can see, this is one mean sandwich. I’d guess this would cost $10 at a deli and I made it for around $3-$4.

Beautiful.

If you’re not a sandwich person, this bread would be great for just dipping in some olive oil as well. It’s a pretty good all-purpose loaf that is a heck of a lot easier to make then, say, a traditional French baguette.

Once my loaves were cooled completely, I stored mine in the fridge, wrapping them twice in plastic wrap. They kept really well for the whole week!

Grilled Grilled Cheese

Something has always burned my toast about grilled cheese sandwiches. They are never actually grilled. They should be called skillet cheeses or maybe a George Foreman Cheese if you rock that way.

In any event, I’ve never actually seen a real grilled cheese that’s actually grilled. So I decided to give it a shot.

Turns out that it’s called a grilled cheese for a reason: It should be grilled. There’s no two ways about it. If you have access to a grill, this is what you do from now on.

Grilled Grilled Cheese

Yield: 2 sandwiches

Prep Time: 10 minutes

Total Time: 20 minutes

Ingredients:

4 pieces thick, sturdy sandwich bread
4 ounces Pepper Jack cheese, or your favorite
Baby spinach, chopped
3-4 ounces bacon, chopped
3-4 Tablespoons butter, softened

Helpful Equipment:
A Grill!

Directions:

1) Roughly chop bacon and spinach and slice or grate your cheese.

2) Butter one side of all 4 pieces of bread.

3) Build the sandwiches before putting them on the grill. Bread, Cheese, bacon, spinach, more cheese, bread.

4) Prep your grill by setting up a very hot zone and a low heat zone.

5) Add sandwiches to high heat zone. Cook for 90 seconds, turn it 90 degrees, cook for another 90 seconds. Flip it.

6) Cook for another 90 seconds, turn it 90 degrees, then another 90 seconds.

7) Move sandwich to your low heat zone for 5-7 minutes and cover the grill. The cheese should melt nicely.

8) Eat immediately!

Prepping the Sandwich

I didn’t include this sandwich in my Grilled Cheese Trials series because the fillings I used were pretty basic, although delicious. My goal was to master the grilled method and worry about fillings later.

That said, I made sure to pick out some stuff that I knew would be tasty together: spinach, pepper jack cheese, and bacon. Get creative with fillings though. Don’t feel limited to these.

Basics for a good sandwich.

One thing you want to make sure you do when prepping your sandwich for the grill is butter it well.

You want a good even layer of butter on each slice of bread. This will make sure the bread doesn’t stick to the grill and also because butter is good.

I used maybe a tablespoon to 1 1/2 Tablespoons for my bread.

Gotta use tha butta.

Make your sandwich on a plate or something. You don’t want to be building it on a hot grill. You’ll just lose a lot of filling ingredients that way.

I stacked my sandwich with cheese, then bacon, spinach, and more cheese. It’s a good idea to roughly chop the spinach and bacon just so it’s easier to eat later on.

Go big!

Prepping the grill

The problem that you have with a grill is that it can get really hot and burn your bread before you even notice it. But we’re going to use that heat to our advantage also.

Prep your grill by making a really hot zone and then a low heat zone. Since I have a gas grill, I turned my front burner on high and left the back two burners off which gave me a great heat zones for this.

When you’re ready to grill, start the sandwich on the very hot zone. Make sure you preheat the grill for 5-10 minutes. You want the thing blazing.

90 seconds, turn 90 degrees, 90 seconds.

Here’s the time breakdown to get a good sandwich. Assuming you have a hot grill, start it for 90 seconds. Then turn it 90 degrees to get crisscross marks, then grill for another 90 seconds.

Now you need to flip the thing. This will be a tricky flip because most likely the cheese won’t be melted yet to hold the sandwich together. Feel free to use a hand to stabilize the sandwich as you flip it.

You should see some very pretty grill marks.

EXPERT.

Grill the sandwich for another 90 seconds, turn it 90 degrees, then a final 90 seconds.

Then move the sandwich to your low heat zone. The key now is to melt the cheese completely without toasting the bread anymore which is already nice and toasty.

Once you have the sandwich over low heat, cover it for about 5 minutes. That should do the trick in the melting department.

Come on... so good.

I like to slice mine in half for easier handling.

This was kind of a messy sandwich, but man was it good.

You want this.

So this makes an awesome sandwich, but that’s not even the best benefit of cooking grilled cheeses on the grill. I think the best reason to do it is if you’re cooking for a crowd! You could bust out 8 of these at once when if you were using a skillet, you’d have to make them individually.

So don’t fear the grill. It makes some darn good cheesy sandwiches.