sandwich sign photo courtesy of Jagosaurus

What a friend we have in cheeses! Jagasaurus eats take-out, and good-looking take-out indeed! It’s a grilled provolone and pepper sandwich on sourdough. In the Flickr comment thread, Jag gives an understated but thoroughly convincing endorsement:

I don’t know why I don’t go to Earl’s more often. They do good work and they have canisters of Old Bay everywhere.

Come Friendly Bombs experiences the wrath of the Leprechaun Burger.

It is a pub burger. It is accompanied by beer not much warmer than the pub fries, beer charged with nitrogen, whose creamy, foamy head forgives all. Almost all.

Cheeseburger cheeseburger cheeseburger! It seems to be a trend. (Does two occurrences constitute a trend?) Erik does his expatriate’s duty and makes a fine-looking hamburger sandwich:

As an expat, one encounters a lot of strange stereotypes about what foreigners think your country is like. Probably the most common I’ve heard is that Americans eat nothing but hamburgers. Rather than dispel this myth, I’ve sort of adopted it as part of my “the American expat” role. For five or six years now I’ve thrown a hamburger party on the Fourth of July, and somehow it’s become a ritual on my daughter’s monthly birthday celebrations. So here we go.

Simon goes back to basics:

Having contributed Belgian and Italian recipes in previous years, I wanted to return to my homeland. Wikipedia claims that cheese sandwiches are quintessentially British (I can hear the howls of protest and derision from non-British readers even now), so who am I to contest the collective wisdom of the internet? A cheese sandwich it will be. Or rather, two cheese sandwiches. Two simple but honest, blokey, British cheese sandwiches.

These two simple but honest cheese sandwiches turn out to be the down-to-earth British staple of cheese and Branston pickle, and the cheese and — wait, what? See the delicious unorthodoxy for yourself.

Maven makes a modern holiday classic, the vegetarian post-Thanksgiving sandwich:

What you see here is Quorn roast, sliced, with vegannaise and sambal oelek (a kind of chili paste and a crucial condiment to keep on hand) and avocado on toasted wheat bread from New French. It was good.

Frédérique offers up perfect tiny ice cream sandwiches:

I made tart cherry ice cream. With all the leftover egg whites, I decided to try making macarons (French macaroons). I give you the Chocolate Macaron Ice Cream Sandwich: tiny, decadent, and absolutely delicious.

My own sandwichery (sandwichcraft?) will have to wait a bit: I’m hampered by a busted camera, a pinched nerve, and a bread shortage. But there will be sandwiches. Oh, baby. is afoot. Oh, baby.

After a good hour of fiddling, fussing, and cussing, I resigned myself to the reality of a properly busted camera, which means the photos of my sandwiches lie, trapped, inside the camera instead of posted here in all their glory. A pity, too, since they’re so colorful.

I started with a controversial sandwich (rather than a controversial doughnut). You will recall that a burrito is not a sandwich… but is a quesadilla a sandwich?

In past Sandwich Parties, we have featured a pancake-and-peanut-butter sandwich, an apple sandwich, pizza sandwich, at least two cracker sandwiches, and several ice cream sandwiches. Clearly, a sandwich does not live by bread alone.

But is a quesadilla a sandwich?

If you could see my example*, you might agree that a quesadilla can be a sandwich. I made a sandwich, a sandwich, I say!, of smashed sweet potatoes (leftover from Thanksgiving) with Parmesan on sandwiched between, I say! a halved whole wheat tortilla, generously seasoned inside and out with cumin and chili powder and grilled to a toasty brown. I served it with a dish of huevos con whatnot. It was a simple and superb dinner on a cold, wet evening.

Having seen Sparkdance’s luscious arepa sandwich, I revoke my admission of controversial sandwich status: foodstuffs stuffed into an arepa constitutes a sandwich! Therefore, my quesadilla constitutes a sandwich.

But back to the arepa! From the tags, I infer that it’s (oh, brace yourself for delicious envy!) roasted pork shoulder, tomato slices, avocado, guayanas cheese, and mango sauce on a gluten-free arepa. Oh. Oh oh oh. I’ll have what she’s having.

My second sandwich: I made M&M cookies for a friend’s birthday. I used Nestle’s Tollhouse cookie recipe, substituting M&Ms for chocolate chips. Plain M&Ms, not peanut… but that sparked a thought. I slapped together a sandwich of crunchy, nutty, all-natural hippie-dippie peanut butter between the two crispy cookies. The sweet, crispy cookie with a hint of salt, the shattering shell of sugar over chcolate, and the earthy, unctuous ground note of the peanut butter — it’s a taste sensation, I tells ya. And so colorful!*

*D’oh, I wish I could show you the photos. I’ll see if I can’t sort out the camera this week.

Remember: the fourth Sandwich Party is coming up just a week from now! Get your appetites and your cameras ready! If you’re looking for inspiration, check out:
- The Rubik’s Cubewich, a cube of toasted bread, meats, and cheeses, liberally slathered with awesome.
- Esquire’s feature on the best sandwiches in the U.S.. Weirdly enough, it includes the McRib and the Chick-fil-A chicken sandwich, which is enough to make me look at the list with hearty suspicion.
- A month of sandwiches!
- If you’re imagining a sandwich made with Thanksgiving leftovers, Marcus LeShock’s round-up of Chicago’s best Thanksgiving sandwiches should give you some food for thought.

If you need a little practice, you can play the Lilo and Stitch Sandwich Stacker game without letting it get smashed!

Pro-tip: Frozen sandwiches do not seem like a good idea. Some highlights from these reviews:
“…a grilled microwaved chicken sweet and slimy onion sandwich.”

“The cheese doesn’t so much make you think ‘cheese’ as make you feel like the ghost of cheese is somehow wrapped across the top of the sandwich.”

“However, if you’re after a sandwich with a watery cheese filling with beef strips that seem like they’re not all wrapped up in a scarily dry, flaky crust, this sandwich is for you.”

To sum up: Sandwiches, good. Frozen sandwiches, bad. Leftovers as sandwich stuffing, good. Sandwich party? GOOD!