Sandwich, Get In My Mouth

What would you say if someone said they wanted you to make some new sandwich creations? My first instinct might be, “Well, haven’t we already thought of everything out there? Haven’t all the good sandwiches already been spoken for?”

The answer is no. And that’s the beauty of a sandwich. You can take a piece of bread, a whole bunch of *stuff, and another piece of bread and you’ve got a sandwich.

*Stuff can be anything that is edible

In fact, my husband has a whole cookbook just on sandwiches. And yet, I still often fall back on the old peanut butter and jelly standard. I’m no gourmet, that’s for sure.

But what makes me a good sandwich maker is that I like to eat. And I get ideas for tastes in my head and give it a shot.

Enter a trip to Walgreens.

By the way, have you been there recently? It’s like a mini grocery store. So I browsed the aisles because I was looking for the new Flatout Hungry Girl Foldit Flatbreads. In fact, I couldn’t find them so I specifically asked the store manager for them. He looked at me very suspiciously as he pointed to them in the frozen food section (I think they’re normally out near the bread section).

And then I started thinking about what would make my dream sandwich. I picked up some ham and turkey. Grabbed some cheese – American and Swiss. But I wanted more. So I grabbed some spaghetti sauce, some shredded mozzarella cheese, and a little ricotta cheese.

My task, along with the blank sandwich canvas of the Flatout Foldit bread, was to create two sandwich sensations. One hot, one cold.

Me + hot sandwiches = LOVE so I started there.

I had this idea to recreate one of my favorite Italian dishes: a ham and cheese calzone and here’s what I came up with.

Ham & Ricotta Stuffed Flatbread Panini

(a good title always makes it sound better)

Ingredients:

Flatout Hungry Girl Foldit Flatbread, Rosemary & Olive Oil
Thinly sliced deli ham
Finely shredded mozzarella cheese
1 jar spaghetti sauce
1 8 oz. container ricotta cheese 

You can make it as high fat or low fat as you want. Since this was a Hungry Girl food item, I thought I should keep it on the lower fat side so I opted for part-skim mozzarella cheese and part-skin ricotta cheese.

Grab some rolls of ham and thinly chop it up. I stuck in on a plate and put it in the microwave for about 20 seconds so it wouldn’t be cold.

I spread about a tablespoon of spaghetti sauce on one half of the Foldit flatbread and sprinkled mozzarella cheese on top. On the other half, I generously spread ricotta cheese (because I love that stuff).

I topped each one with some ham and I folded it. Just like it says to do. And then I put those bad boys on my panini maker.

Not as thick and oozing with cheese like I might get from the local Italian place but I’d bet it has at least 1000 calories less.

Super fast. Super easy. Super cheesy. But I will say the spaghetti sauce decided to drip a lot so I played around with some variations. I made the next batch WITHOUT the spaghetti sauce inside. Just used the cheeses and ham and grilled it. The result was just as good especially when I warmed up some sauce and used it for dipping!

And the next day for lunch, I still wanted the same taste. With the same ingredients, I made some mini-pizzas and I decided NOT to fold the Foldit flatbread. I was quite pleased with this version.

I know. I should just stop there and end on a high note. It doesn’t get much better than hot and cheesy. But I wanted to make a cold sandwich as well. For those days when you don’t feel like breaking out a panini maker. No problem. I aim to please.

Turkey, Bacon, Swiss, and Avocado Folded Flatbread Sandwich

(because everything tastes better with avocado)

Ingredients:

Flatout Hungry Girl Foldit Flatbread, Rosemary & Olive Oil
Thinly slice deli turkey
Sliced swiss cheese
Turkey bacon
Avocado

This sandwich requires a little preparation. About 1 minute and 30 seconds worth of preparation. That’s literally how long it took me to pull out some turkey bacon and microwave it (following directions of course).

I began my sandwich in this way: Swiss cheese and two slices of turkey bacon.

I topped each sandwich with some turkey and prepared the avocado with my handy avocado slicer. And if you don’t have one, you should get one. It makes life so much easier.

Put it all together. Salt and pepper on my husband’s sandwich. Just salt on mine.

Fold it and go. Seriously. That simple and that easy. And the avocado gives enough moisture to the sandwich that you don’t have to slather on high fat mayonnaise (which my husband did anyway).

It was so good that I had it again the next day as a panini. I don’t know what the rule is on grilling and avocado but I wouldn’t say it was the smartest idea I had.

Now I know at this point, you’re probably thinking that I should go ahead and start a food blog with all of the amazing things I can create. But I’m going to leave that up to the experts. And in this case, the experts actually come with every package of Flatout Hungry Girl Foldit flatbread (yes, that’s a mouthful). You’ll find a nice little card of really good looking sandwich suggestions.

 And when in doubt, just put some things on the bread, fold it up, and eat it!

Want to try it yourself? I may have a way to make it easier for you. But you’ll have to stay tuned to find out how. In the meantime, leave me your suggestion for what kind of sandwich you might make.

Disclosure: This post was sponsored by The Motherhood and Flatout at Walgreens. All opinions expressed are my own and all recipes are my original creations (as if you had any doubt).