Finally, enough mustard!

I hit the ratio correctly on my smoked turkey, spinach, hot mango chutney and dijon mustard on 9 grain today. Whooo boy!

I also finished off the chutney. One mostly empty condiment jar down, 100 to go!

#9?...#9?....

#9 was a repeat of #8, but with more chutney and mustard. Still not hot enough. But still quite tasty!
I ate it yesterday, which keeps me on pace for 365 sandwiches. Crazy.

I don't make New Year's resolutions

But I have decided to finish all of the condiments currently residing in my refrigerator. Beth and I are really bad at using 90% of a jar of something and leaving the rest to languish in the depths of the fridge for all eternity. Then, when I clean it out, I either throw them away or stuff them right back in on the bottom shelf. Well, no more!
This leads me to sandwich #8: hot mango chutney, dijon mustard, smoked turkey and spinach on 9 grain bread. I had it for lunch today and it was pretty tasty, but not as hot as I had hoped. I was going for a good nasal clearing event, but it stopped just short of that. I will have to try again tomorrow! Which might just finish off the jar of chutney....yay!

#6 & #7

#6 was a Supreme Grilled Cheese from Pete's in downtown Los Angeles. We went there after seeing the Murakami exhibit at the Geffen Contemporary. The exhibit was fun. It's gotten lots of press for being commercial--there's a Louis Vuitton store in the middle of the gallery, set up like a cross between a store and a gallery display. Three sales people, no price tags...if you have to ask, you can't afford it! Back to the sandwich--cheddar, blue cheese, goat cheese and caramelized onions on Texas toast. Deeelish. I'll have to remember that combo for the future.

#7 was half of Beth's leftover Grilled Vegetable sandwich from Mo's. It was huge, so I'm counting it as a whole. I ate it on the plane on the way home Sunday night. We went to Mo's on Friday night with my family, plus my cousins and some family friends. It's a tradition! The sandwich held up pretty well after two days in the fridge and half a day in my backpack. It had eggplant, zucchini, peppers and onions with some kind of white cheese (mozzarella?) on a roll. Much better than anything I could have gotten in the airport!

#3, #3.25, #4, #5

#3 was an In-n-Out Double Double which I experimentally squashed in my NEW panini press! Result. Panini press 1, Double Double 0. They don't really need to be squashed. But it was still delicious. You'll hear more on the panini press later, don't worry!

#3.25 was one quarter of the grilled cheese I made for my mom on the panini press. I am going to have so much fun with that machine!

#4 was an "Egg McMilton" from the Village Coffee Shop (aka the Beachwood Cafe). Beth and I had breakfast with my friends from high school, Carrie and Jackie. We see each other once a year to mock ourselves and gossip about classmates. Mostly it's Jackie and I saying names to each other and Carrie saying, "who?" Anyway, back to the sandwich: English muffin, poached(!) egg, bacon, tomato slices. Pretty darn good.

#5 was an assortment of finger sandwiches served prior to the foreign film committee screenings at the Academy. I didn't even know there would be snacks there! Roast beef, pepper jack, aioli on multi grain roll. Pesto and eggplant on focaccia. I had 3 but they were little so I think they added up to a whole sandwich. The eggplant one was nice and tasty. The movies were quite good too. The foreign film committee is made of Academy members who screen all of the official entries for best foreign language film and rate them to narrow down the list to the 5 nominees. My dad's a member. It can be a fun committee to be on, if the movies are good. Or it can be torture if the movies are bad. Kind of a crapshoot. We saw Beaufort from Israel and XXY from Argentina. Both were interesting meditations on the human condition. Soldiers waiting to surrender a fort in Lebanon and an intersexed teenager trying to figure things out in Argentina. I don't think they'll be coming to a theater near you anytime soon, but you never know...

#2!

My lovely brother surprised me with a Tommy's breakfast sandwich this morning.

It is perhaps the greatest offering from that esteemed Los Angeles establishment besides chili cheese fries. It's a hamburger bun, sausage patty, fried egg, tomato slice, pickles, chopped raw onions, mayonnaise and, of course, American cheese and chili. Super! My nine year old niece even ate one.

There's no way to accurately describe it, really. Like a baby that is so ugly it's cute, the Tommy's breakfast sandwich is so gross it's delicious. The chili has a weird greasy viscous quality that makes it stick inside the bun for the most part. The American cheese gets all melty and adds to that viscous chili quality. The pickles are pretty awesome, as is the giant slice of tomato. And the sausage patty is so much tastier than a hamburger patty. That's why I pick the breakfast sandwich over the more traditional burger at Tommy's. Sadly, you can only get it at breakfast.
A quick update--I asked my niece how she liked Tommy's chili a few days later and she said she didn't know since she'd never had it. I reminded her about the breakfast sandwich and she said, "That was chili? I thought it was some weird orange cheese."
Don't get me wrong, the burger is fantastic as well. They take out the egg and sausage and put in two patties and mustard. My brother sang a long and enthusiastic serenade to his double chili cheese the other night. In between bites, of course. I'll have to get me one of those before I go home!

#1

Caprese Sandwich
Trattoria Restaurant, Disney's California Adventure
Lunch, January 1, 2008

Roasted red peppers, fresh mozzarella, tomatoes, basil, olive tapenade on pretzel bread. Sounded better than it tasted, but the tapenade was nice and zingy.

It begins!