Mrs. Pickles

There's a chain of sandwich shops in Northern California (and Nevada) called Mr. Pickles. We only ever went once but they had good sandwiches. That's besides the point though.

Jeremiah has said since we were married I should open up my own restaurant but just like sewing, I need the freedom to be creative and making the same monotonous things over and over and over would take the love out of it all.That's kinda besides the point too except for the fact that the sandwiches I made today for lunch kinda reminded me of Mr. Pickles except for the fact that I don't even know if they make panini style sandwhices and in that case it would have nothing to do at all with my own restaurant or Mr. Pickles.

ANYWAY, I had 'kraut in the fridge, home made bread I had to use up and we always have cheese and sandwich meat. So, I set to work on a toasted sort of reuben sort of grilled cheese ham and pickle panini type sandwich and it was delish. It wasn't until after I was done shoveling it into my mouth that I realized I should have taken a photo but at that point it wasn't looking its best.

Recipe:
-2 pieces of bread (rye, wheat, sourdough, white, whatever)- I used home made white that was a couple days old
-butter or margerine (butter makes nicer grilled cheese I think)
-sandwich meat (turkey or ham or pastrami or whatever)- I used ham
-sliced pickles
-kraut
-ranch dressing (or mayo or miracle whip, though quite frankly I think miracle whip ruins just about everything so take your chances :o)- I used ranch
-processed cheese (or rubber cheese as my Mom would call it, or swiss or whatever)- I used Kraft processed "rubber" cheese although swiss sure sounded good!

Preheat an iron skillet on medium or so before you start assembling but make sure all your ingredients are ready to go when you start to preheat.

Layer your sandwich as follows (it may work a different way but I hate when the middle layers fall out and I found this layering to hold together quite well!):

Bread, cheese, pickles, meat, 'kraut, ranch dressing (on the bread), bread.

Butter your top piece of bread lay the buttered side down in the pan. You don't want your skillet so hot that it burns right away and smokes up the whole house though so be careful in timing your preheating. . Put a heavy weight on top before you butter what is now your un-buttered top piece of bread. I used another skillet for my weight and viola, home made panini press without the grill lines. Once your bottom bread is toasted, butter your top piece of bread, flip and put your weight back on. The heat under the sandwich shouldn't be searing hot, you need enough time so that cheese melts and the insides get warm without burning the bread (just in case you didn't know how to make a grilled cheese).

As a side note, the weight on the sandwich kinda smooshes it all together and gives a really nice crunchy crunch on the bread...not just a soft crunch of a regular grilled cheese-or boy cheese as Drew would call it.

Drew's so funny. For those of you who don't know him, he will NOT eat a grilled cheese (girl cheese), it must be called a boy cheese.

Anyhoos, there's a new recipe to try if you feel so inclined. Really really good!