STOP THE PRESSES: Late addition to the Sandwich Life's Food in 2023

A few trends emerge and a late December surprise

Dec 28, 2023

It was so interesting perusing all the food photographs we took this year. There was no wondering what our own personal trends of the year were. They stood out loud and clear. Now I’ll preface this by saying we’ve been on a budget so that set some parameters. You would have seen a lot more fish and shellfish otherwise but I’m not sure it impacted things much more than that. We had already made the decision to try to eat less meat so that was not particularly a budgetary restraint although it fit well into the plan (and believe me, I use the word ‘plan’ extremely lightly).

1. EGGS

As we leaned into less meat, I must admit, we leaned into eggs HARD. We’ve got a ways to go before we get close to vegan I’m afraid. Ernie has always adored eggs. When he recounts what he ate for breakfast as a teen I am utterly amazed.

There were eggs every which way… .in sandwiches with mayo and arugula (my secret sandwich ingredient of the year) and sometimes cheese for me. Ernie enjoys an egg sandwich but he is probably happiest with a big plate full of fried eggs. He eats all the whites first so he’s left with a plate of little sunflower yolks.

Eggs on leftovers or scrambled eggs and toast when I didn’t feel great. Ernie has a way of keeping the yolk runny but still getting the browned crispy edges on the whites. And our TALabration for Leo and Tal saw me making a huge platter of egg salad. Why don’t I make egg salad more often? It’s delightful.

Because we didn’t do as many wanders this year, we didn’t enjoy as many of our diner breakfasts. As wonderful as the food at OHOP here in town is, I just think this kind of breakfast always tastes better out of town. We always order the same things, the control in our diner experiment so to speak. Two eggs, over easy, hash browns, sausage patties, no toast. Iced tea for me, black coffee for him. Points subtracted for American fries or any sort of hash brown substitute, as well as for sausage links. Extra points awarded for iced tea spoons and Ernie likes it if jelly packets are available even though he doesn’t use them. Hot sauce is a must but I’m not picky as to brand.

2. VEGETABLES

When you’re cutting back on meat, it’s inevitable that vegetables come to the forefront. Thankfully we love vegetables. One of the best things Ernie cooked all year long (and he did a LOT of the cooking this year) was this Cabbage, Carrot and Potato Stew. It wasn’t vegetarian as we had some beautiful turkey broth to use but it was an absolutely brilliant example of the whole being much greater than the sum of its parts. It was a year for cooking simply and this soup exemplifies that.

This red lentil and rice with vegetables and garam masala was a good find. Baked in the oven so little to no effort. We found ourselves enjoying a dollop of Greek yoghurt on some of our soups and stews.

3. TOMATOES

T-O-M-A-T-O SUMMER!

If you’d like you can sing that to the tune of the Bay City Rollers’ Saturday Night.

Heather and Steve are way too generous with their tomatoes because I know how much time and effort, and time and effort, and time and effort they put into them. They’re always great, but I swear, those tomatoes just BROUGHT it this summer. They just freaking brought it. My favorite were the big huge yellow, somewhat oval tomatoes that had streaks of red in the flesh. I believe Steve said they were Kellogg’s Breakfast tomatoes. Let me tell you, they made a hell of a tomato sandwich.

There were tomato sandwiches, there was tomato pasta, and just about every plate was adorned with tomatoes from late summer well into fall. I just used the last of fall’s green tomatoes not that long ago. It was a tomato summer to remember.

When we reached the point that we had a mountain of tomatoes we were inspired by local food guru Laurence Mate and made bacon confit tomatoes. Good God in heaven those tomatoes (on their own, they didn’t need the depleted and almost burnt bacon) were the most luscious things you can imagine, both delicate and hearty at the same time if that’s possible. All you needed was a little pasta and a sprinkle of parmesan, or just a big bowl.

4. PASTA

I had tried various gluten-free pastas in the past and had always been somewhat disappointed, or just plain irritated, by them. They’ve come a long way though and I am quite fond of Barilla’s gluten-free spaghetti. Their penne still breaks up too much for me but we still probably ate more than our fair share of spaghetti this year. We learned that with anchovy paste, a sprinkle of red pepper flakes, some pasta water and parmesan any vegetable you add is going to taste great. Our zucchini plant was late and not terribly prolific (by zucchini standards) but there were a lot of memorable zucchini pastas this year.

Oh, this one was good….kale and bacon with spaghetti. Delightful.

I also fell in love with browning shelf stable gluten free gnocchi until it was the tiniest bit crisp and tossing the vegetable du jour with it made for a great dinner. A bit of bacon or smoked salmon was good with it but it stood on its own without that and it, honest to good, took less than 15 minutes because you don’t even have to boil water.

Of course our categories all ran together too….EGGS, TOMATOES, VEGETABLES, PASTA!

5. It’s Not as Though We Didn’t Eat Meat Though

Although we ate plenty of meat throughout the year, I gotta say, the meals with meat weren’t generally the ones that stood out. These Aldi’s lamb loin chops however, seared briefly in olive oil, with just salt and pepper, blew us away. Yet again, simple FTW.

I would have been happy to eat more fish this year but what we did have was wonderful. Crispy skinned and somewhat rare is how I love salmon.

Ernie is a chicken fiend and so often when we didn’t know what to have, we threw chicken thighs or a whole chicken in a roasting pan and sprinkled it with sumac, our spice of the year.

6. BISCUITS

Now Ernie had perfected his biscuits long ago but this was the year he conquered gluten-free biscuits. Now his biscuits aren’t the soft layered Southern biscuits you read about. They are drop biscuits and are what my mother always called baking powder biscuits, but don’t all biscuits have baking powder? I don’t know, but these are craggy and crunchy on the top but soft and tender inside. King Arthur Flour’s One to One Gluten Free Flour was the key, and we made the most of it.

7. SWEETS

Neither Ernie or I are huge sweets people. We seem to be coming into a new phase though. Now, you WILL note that these were all made by others.

Shrug.

Old dogs can only learn so much.

Boo. Good Lord. Her pumpkin pie and Mince pie at Thanksgiving were beyond glorious. I thought about them for days afterward, particularly the Mince!

One of my favorite Illinois wanders of the year ended with us getting a cone from Detroit Dairy Delight before we headed home. I got a salted caramel cone and it will live on in my memory for a long time. Ernie dropped the first cone getting into the car but they gave him another one for free. We sat in the parking lot, licked contentedly ,and admired a beautiful early building in front of us. Detroit, Illinois’ population is under 100 but they have a volunteer-run library (in my building) and, of course, the Dairy Delight.

Teri and Brian had a wonderful party at the beginning of summer and we celebrated Ernie’s birthday with Ann’s unearthly good carrot cake.

On both Fourth of July and at our Christmas gathering Heather brought me painfully good gluten-free blondies. They had white chocolate chips and pecans and were just heavenly. I even had to fight Ernie for them.

Ok, that was going to be my list, and I think a pretty accurate list, but there was a late entry.

7. THE BEST BREAD I’VE EATEN IN YEARS!

I swear to God, I almost cried over bread last night. I first realized that gluten didn’t agree with me back in 2015 or so. I’d done a 30 day cleanse kind of thing and was absolutely gobsmacked to realize how much better I felt without gluten. It took me a while to fully commit (after many attempts and lots of gastro tests). While mine is just an intolerance and nothing more serious, I find if I cheat too much I pay the price. It’s certainly not the worst thing in the world to have to avoid gluten particularly these days and there are some fairly good gluten free breads available (and some really bad ones too). However, once in a while you just want BREAD. Soft, fresh, fragrant bread with a bit of chew to the crust. You know what gives bread that delicious chew? GLUTEN!

Well.

Yesterday Heather came over to hang out and decompress and drink wine with me for a bit.

She showed up with a still warm loaf of bread wrapped in a beautiful tea towel. She baked me gluten free bread and it was FREAKING HEAVEN!

It was all I could have asked for and I haven’t had bread like this in years. IN ACTUAL YEARS! Dare I say it? And I do apologize for all the capital letters, but it is THE REAL DEAL, a term which we do not toss around lightly.

We had sandwiches for dinner of course. Ham sandwiches with a bit of cheese on half as we didn’t have enough for both of us to have it on a whole sandwich. Some crunchy lettuce, mayo and mustard.