Bonus Post: On bread, sandwiches, wraps and pittas

Bread & Sandwiches - the ultimate budget food

This was my Christmas leftover sandwich.  Sadly I don't get to eat that well all the time...

The thing with budget value shopping, is that a lot of times, you get a lot of similar produce.  By that I mean, sandwich fillings.

But, the haul I scored in February, made me very glad to eat everything that could be put between two slices of bread.  You'll see below.


Bread and its cousins, the pitta, the wrap, the flatbread, are eaten all over the world in all their forms - they're cheap, portable, and the perfect carrier for tasty fillings.

In Ireland, the most common reduced items for sambos that I've seen during my exploits in the Clearance section are: 
 -  "luncheon" meat, ham, turkey, chicken
 - Salad  - it makes a great partner to meat, or even on its own with toast.  Given a little mayo or your own homemade sauces, it's worth a try between two slices of bread.
 - Coleslaw always works well as a second filling, I've seen many a pack for a mere €0.50.  I've even eaten it on its own on toast.
 - Cheese  - Sometimes there's a wedge or two if you're lucky.  Usually it's Edam or Leerdammer, but occasionally I've seen some nice Cashel Blue.
  
In the non-reduced sections, there's the supermarket value sandwich "pastes" I used to love as a kid, but, really, if I was to recommend eating that, I'd say, make a cup of Bovril and put it on toast.  Those weird spreads do NOT make a good sandwich.  Snack, yes, sandwich, no.


So, as John Montagu may have said "Shut up, give me something satisfying between two bits of bread, and let me get back to my card game!"

Delicious home baked ham for 39% of original cost.  That was tasty...

This was some dang fine ham at around a quarter of the normal cost as well.

Ham, cheese and mustard pitta

Pittas are potentially my second favourite thing to fill up with taste.  Mine were a little stale, so...
 
 - Dunk the stale pitta in water briefly
 - Bake or grill it until it's nice and toasty / steamy
 - Split and fill with ham, cheese and mustard
 - Stick in back under the grill / oven, until the cheese is melted.  

I also like to add a little salad and tomatoes, maybe a bit of mayonnaise, or of course, anything else you like.  Leftover curry goes well in a pitta too. 

  Reuben

A Reuben sandwich is Pastrami or corned beef, sauerkraut, Thousand Island dressing and cheese.  It's a staple of New York deli culture and ever since I've seen it on TV, I've wanted one.  

I nearly wanted to make a Vine video featuring "The Ecstacy of Gold" by Ennio Morricone when I found this motherlode!

€11.10 worth of spicy beef for €3.33? How much is that?

Seriously, that much?!  Good job I love pastrami!

  For mine I used this slightly dry but absolutely tasty chunk of pastrami, red cabbage & my home made pickles, and a bit of Leerdammer cheese ( €1.50 for 6 slices)

For the dressing 
 Mustard (1 tsp), mayo(2 tbsp) and ketchup(2.5 tbsp) make a nice cheat's Thousand Island dressing.  

Sloppy Joes

 A great way to use up leftover bolognese or chilli, is the Sloppy Joe.  A certain English chef who lives in North London and who likes toast, introduced me to this in his book "Real Fast Food" , which is one of the best cook books full stop if you want cheap, quick, and delicious food from scratch.

So...
  - Chop and fry a bell pepper in a little oil.
 -  Once it looks soft, add a mushroom or two to the pan.
 - Now add your leftover chilli / pasta sauce / mince beef mix, and heat through
 - Add 2 tablespoons of ketchup
 - Add one of English mustard, two if using Dijon or American
 - A little chilli or paprika.  Or hot sauce.  However hot you like your food...
 - A bit more tomato puree if you have it will keep the thickness at the right level.  
 - Worcestershire sauce.  Mandatory.

Once it's heated through and has a consistency that looks like it could *almost* spill out of the side of a wrap, baguette, or two bits of pan loaf, it's ready.  Ladle a big spoon into your bread of choice, spill, enjoy.

Leftover burritos

 And you know leftover chilli works well in a burrito too?  No?  Boil a bit of rice, put your leftover chilli in there, season with more sauce and chilli, maybe a bit of that cheese and salad, and prove me wrong!

Leftover bread

We've all had to throw out stale or mouldy bread.  I hate doing it.  Budget bread has a habit of going off more rapidly than full price or locally bought loaves, so I tend to only buy what I need, or what I know I can use quickly.  I normally just buy myself a few rolls for my local baker, and if I do buy a supermarket value budget loaf, it's sandwiches for lunch every day, before it goes off.

That said, stale bread can be dried, shredded up and kept to use as breadcrumbs for burgers, stews, soups, stuffing, or as a topping for Macaroni and cheese maybe?  Or chipped into croutons for things like French Onion soup, or the Caesar Salad I made in this post .  Damp and moisture is the enemy of fresh bread, so make sure you have a paper bag and a space in your freezer.

 Now what to wash it all down with?  Oh wait... a 12 pack of diet soft drinks for €2.34!

Aw yeah.  Let's get another picture of that massive slab of pastrami...

Somewhere in the background, Also Sprach Zarathustra was playing.  On a budget trumpet.

Getting the bread nice and toasty with the super pan my brother bought me.

Can't describe how tasty this was, using mere HTML.