Veg BLT

My in-laws left at 11:45 which left me 22 minutes to whip up lunch, when we're low on groceries and I strained my back.

I had my daughter help me whip up a batch of skillet biscuits, all with unbleached white flour as I'm out of my specialty flours of wheat and rye.

When my husband got home, he sliced a tomato from the garden for me and got the spring mix ready. My daughter got the mayo. I put a drop of olive oil in the small frying pan and dropped our last four slices of Morningstar Vegetarian bacon in the pan and covered them with a pinch of organic four color pepper.

We assembled the little sandwiches and they were yummy. For dessert we had warm biscuits with blackberry jam, and my daughter-- so enamored with these fluffy biscuits-- requested a THIRD, this one with peanut butter and jelly.

Cream Cheese and Tuna sandwiches

I made these open-faced tuna sandwiches as an attempt at a quick lunch when we are low on groceries.

Ingredients:
- 2 everything bagels
- 1 tablespoon butter
- 1.5 teaspoons mayonnaise
- 1 can tuna
- 1/2 teaspoon four color pepper
- about 2 tablespoons shredded cheddar for each half a bagel, which is about 1/4 cup
- 1 tablespoon grated romano
- about 1 heaping tablespoon cream cheese for each bagel half

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

In the Le Creuset skillet, I melted one tablespoon butter on low and placed the four bagel halves face-down in the pan to toast. After about two minutes, I turned the heat to medium, let them toast for a minute and flip over.

As soon as you flip the bagels, turn off the heat to the burner so you can leave the bagels in there. Spread about a tablespoon of cream cheese onto each bagel.

In a separate bowl, mix tuna, mayo, pepper and romano. Place about 1/4 of the tuna mix on each bagel in an even layer. Top with cheddar, about 2 tablespoons each sandwich.

Place the skillet in the oven for five to ten minutes to melt the cheese on top.

Chicken salad picnic

As part of our picnic, Gayle made the following chicken salad:

20 ounces of shredded cooked chicken
1 small apple, diced small
15-20 grapes cut in half or quarters if large
1 handful sliced almonds

Mix together

Add dressing of 1 part Mayo and 1 part plain Greek Yogurt or regular
yogurt drained.

There was a lot of grapes (which I liked, they were *perfect* red grapes) and we could have used some more almonds, but then, I love almonds. I love fruity chicken salad. And Gayle and I had the discussion that we're not fans of mayo, so hence the yogurt substitution. Gayle said she read you could used mashed avocado instead of mayo for the fat, and so we added sliced avocado. That was yummy. So there may be something to this avocado idea.

Killer turkey sandwiches

I made killer turkey sandwiches for lunch today.

On my homemade multigrain biscuits I lathered the homemade pesto mayonnaise, stacked green leaf lettuce on top, added cucumber and roast turkey. On the "lid," I sliced Jarlsberg cheese and melted it.

Served with a side of Italian vegetables (steam-in-bag from Aldi) and more cucumbers with dippings. Apparently, the cucumbers are a hit with my daughter. She's devouring them today.

I'm trying to make up for some vegetable deficiency while I haven't felt well.

Scrambled egg wraps

Tonight for dinner I made a knock off of Vito Caiati's Heuvos Diablo. I started with five eggs (that's how many were left in the package). I only had two tortillas left so I heated those in my le Creuset pan, with a touch of olive oil in the pan. For the other, I put the last section of homemade bread in the skillet.

I made a simple salad for each of us of romaine lettuce, a touch of romano and some ranch dressing.

I put a tortilla (or bread) on each plate. Then I added more oil to the Le Creuset skillet and approximately an equal part low sodium soy sauce and let it heat. Added a can of potatoes. (Yes, a can. I keep them around for when I want potatoes and don't have potatoes.) Sprinkled them with It's a Dilly.

Scrambled the eggs, added some soy milk, put them in a different skillet. Once they were scrambled I topped with havarti dill cheese and transferred to the tortilla shell.

For the sauce, I mixed one part horseradish mustard with two parts mayonnaise.

The beverage of choice was 100% juice diluted with seltzer.

Parmesan Tuna Sandwiches

So, I did make tuna sandwiches for lunch on the store bought wheat bread from Wegmans. (I bought it because I had a coupon.) We only have one can of tuna, so that means a half-sandwich for each of us (Mommy, Daddy and Baby).

My tuna today was:

• one can solid white tuna packed in water
• 2 tablespoons safflower mayonnaise*
• 2 tablespoons parmesan cheese
• 3 slices Wegmans whole wheat sandwich bread sliced in half.

*What shocked me is that my mayonnaise is really mayonnaise. For years, I've been using vegan/soy mayonnaise for health reasons and because I hate mayonnaise in the traditional sense. But when I was scraping the last of the mayo out of the jar, I noticed that the ingredients listed eggs. I had purchased safflower mayonnaise instead of soy!

What made that even more compelling was the high vitamin E content in the mayonnaise. 1 tablespoon of that safflower mayonnaise has 2o% of the RDA of Vitamin E. Interesting.

To accompany these meager sandwiches, I also served tortilla chips and mango salsa (vitamins A & C thanks to the salsa) and applesauce. We also had a snack a few minutes ago of dried Italian meat stick so I'm sure that will also help compensate for the half-sandwich.