The Cottage Smallholder

Yesterday's old sandwich toasted for today

One of the great things about winter is that Jalopy becomes a sort of mobile fridge. Most of the door seals have deteriorated to slivers. This is great for keeping sandwiches chilled. Yesterday’s unfinished sandwich can fill a ‘no time for breakfast’ gap if I am running late the next morning.

If you drive a ‘normal’ car, you need a letter from your parents to try this trick as the interior of most modern cars are well insulated against the cold. If you drive a Jalopy, this post may be of interest to you.

I’d bought a designer loaf (cranberry and mixed seed granary bread) from the cut-price section at Waitrose. At 49p it was a snip compared to its normal £1.29 tag. Danny wasn’t so sure and prodded it suspiciously. He calls these “girlie breads”.

In fact it was very tasty but D would need some encouragement to sample it. Rushing home for lunch, I noticed that there was an unwanted girlie bread sandwich from the day before sitting on Jalopy’s passenger seat. If it had been summer this sandwich would have turned up its crusts and been a gonner. This one seemed fresh and had the possibility of life beyond the front seat.  Too chunky to be pressed into the toasted sandwich maker but too stale to be eaten ‘raw’.

As I reversed through our gate I remembered that we have a very nifty device for barbecuing fish. A grid that holds the fish so that you can turn them easily on the grill. The sandwich fitted neatly into it and I grilled (broiled) it for three minutes each side under a medium grill.

I delivered Danny’s half to his desk and crept away. Within minutes he was down in the kitchen asking for more.
“It was delicious. What was the bread exactly and the filling?”
The ingredients had transmogrified into a wonderful tasty meltiness. The bread was crisp on the outside and warm in the middle

The filling was cheddar cheese, tomatoes and Lesieur Dijon mustard mayonnaise. A few months ago Amalee Issa tipped this as the best ever commercially made mayonnaise in a comment on our blog. Meanwhile it has been sourced in France by Miles, who travels there regularly. It‘s wonderful mayo. Knocks Hellman’s into a cocked hat and is better than anything that I’ve ever run up at home. Used instead of butter, it has far less fat and much more punch. So I spread it on sandwiches constantly and Danny wafts it on everything that’s not a roast. Thank you Amalee for your great blog and your stupendous tip.

Grilled sandwiches are the perfect answer for a simple lunch snack when your bread is just a bit stale. Suddenly yesterday’s retread sandwich was better than anything that I could have made today. Saving cash is revealing. Delicacies that would have formally been jettisoned into landfill have a second chance. Now they have a voice and 90% of the time they sing.