Marble Rye Bread from Ralph's Grocery - Deal of the Day

My fave late-night snack is a fresh, toasted thick slice of bread with a smear of real Butter, especially if the bread is Marble Rye Bread. Hey, I'll eat this almost any time of day, when a small pang of hunger hits. Gluten + carbs = heaven!

Marble Rye & Butter - Video             Play it here, video runs 53 seconds.

My YouTube video link for viewing or embedding: just click here.

I've been getting bread lately in the discount bin at my local Ralph's grocery store. Every week or so, I pick up a big, cheap container of plain yogurt and a can of coffee, and I always make sure to see what kind of bread is in the discount bin. I like to try out different types of bread when they're on sale.

When I saw a large round loaf of Marbled Rye, discounted for less than two dollars, I had to give it a try. "Day-old" bread may not be at its best right out of the bag, but when I toast bread from the discount bin, the outside is crisp, but the inside becomes soft, almost like fresh-baked bread. 

Marble Rye Bread is a mix of light and dark rye dough. The raw dough is braided together to give a swirl of black and white bread. Marbled Rye creates a visually stunning sandwich. Serve it to impress a date or guests.

If I have toasted Bread & Butter, then I will use real butter, either with or without salt.

The flavor of rye is stronger than wheat and even sourdough, with an earthy, herbal flavor of caraway and fennel seeds. When baked, Marble Rye Bread is slightly chewy and dense. Regular Rye Bread is uniform in color, often with pungent Caraway Seeds sprinkled throughout.

I've eaten many Pastrami and Corned Beef Sandwiches here in L.A., and always order them on plain rye bread. The pungent rye goes great with rich and smoky Jewish deli thick-sliced pastrami.

Canter's Delicatessen, one of the oldest Jewish delis in L.A., had an anniversary celebration, practically giving away the sandwiches, and you can see the video below.

You can get all the tasty text and yummy photos for my East Corned Beef and  Easy Homemade Pastrami recipes by clicking on the names.

There is nothing wrong with "Day-Old" fresh-baked bread, especially if you toast it and add a smear of butter -- that's the way I do it.

The Best Turkey Salad Recipe - Video

I love Turkey Salad as much as Chicken or Tuna Salad. It has a milder taste compared to tuna, and the crunchy veggies and mayo/mustard come forward in flavor. My Turkey Salad recipe video will have you coming back for seconds and thirds.

The ingredient list is small. I like a little fine chopped onion and celery for crunch. And those veggies are about the least expensive ones you can find at any grocery store.

I also include a tablespoon of sweet pickle relish. I found it at my local Dollar Tree. You can add more or less veggies and relish to suit your taste. Leave out the veggies for a meatier salad.

I add a little mustard with a lot of mayo for extra creamy Turkey Salad. Again, you can adjust the balance to please yourself and the family. If you don't like mustard, then leave it out.

I use leftover roasted turkey meat from the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays. 

Roast Turkey Recipe, click here.

Canned turkey or chicken is fine to use, too - just drain it like you would with canned tuna.

You can often find uncooked turkey legs and breast in the meat department of larger grocery stores. 

Turkey Salad is a versatile recipe that's delish between 2 slices of bread, or as an appetizer, and spread on any favorite cracker. Put a big scoop on your favorite green garden salad for extra flavor and heft.

So next holiday, reserve some Roasted Turkey (recipe) and mix up my latest video recipe of a Turkey Salad. 

And, if you can't wait for the holidays, I have a recipe for Roasted Turkey Breast, just click here. You can roast a Turkey Leg the same way. 

                                                 Turkey Salad - Video                               Play it here. Video runs 1 minute, 52 seconds.

To view or embed from YouTube, click here.

Ingredients

• Roast Turkey - cooked and cubed or shredded. About 2 cups. Okay to use dark or white meat, or both. Okay to substitute Roast Chicken.
• 1/4 cup chopped Onion - okay to add more or less to taste. I finely chopped 1/4 of a brown onion. You can use any type of onion, including red and green onions.
• 1/2 cup chopped Celery - okay to add more or less to taste. I used one celery rib.
• 1 tablespoon Pickle Relish - optional.
• 1 teaspoon Mustard - or Dijon mustard. I've made this salad without mustard.
• 3 tablespoons Mayonnaise - any favorite light or whole mayo. Again, add a tablespoon at a time to reach your preferred creaminess.
• Salt and Pepper to taste.

Directions

I always have leftover Roasted Turkey over the holidays of Thanksgiving and Christmas. You can use dark or white meat or both. Slice or cube cooked Turkey into bite-sized pieces.

Chop celery and onion. I like onions in salads (Tuna, Chicken, and Egg Salad), finely chopped. For celery, I like pieces a little larger. Okay to chop veggies any way you like.

Now time to bring it all together. Add chopped turkey and veggies to a bowl.

Mix in a tablespoon of pickle relish. Stir in a tablespoon of mayo at a time to reach your desired creaminess. I mixed in about 3 tablespoons total.

Add a teaspoon of mustard. Okay to add or subtract amounts of mayo and mustard to suit your tastes.

Finally, salt and pepper to taste. Store Turkey Salad in the refrigerator. If you wait a couple of hours before serving, all the ingredients will have time to meld and become more intense.

I like to scoop my Turkey Salad onto a toasted onion bagel. You can serve Turkey Salad with crackers as an appetizer. Add a scoop of Turkey Salad to your favorite salad.

BLT Sandwich - Bacon, Lettuce & Tomato

 Bacon everything! At the spear end of the bacon fad is the BLT Sandwich. Bacon seems to return every few years as a popular ingredient. It does go back a way as a sandwich ingredient that really came into its own when G.I.'s returned from WWII. 

BLT means Bacon, Lettuce, and Tomato Sandwich in the restaurant world and the public soon adopted it, too. I remember making them with leftover bacon from breakfast. 

What's so great about the sandwich is how simple it is. Just fry or bake up a few slices of bacon, toast some bread, and slide the bacon between two slices smeared with mayo, and add sliced tomato and lettuce. It's a crunchy first bite.

I jumped back into the BLT game when I saw Hickory Smoked Uncured Turkey Bacon by Applegate Naturals at my local 99c only Store last year. I jumped on that deal big time and bought five packages to freeze. I haven't seen this Bacon again there, that's why you have to buy a good deal when you first see it because they will not be there for long!

Right away I made a Bacon, Lettuce, and Tomato Sandwich. Simply delicious. While pork bacon is the gold standard, this uncured turkey bacon hit the spot. It is a lighter and meatier sandwich without the thick veins of pork fat of regular bacon. The smokey flavor is still there, and I didn't miss the porkiness. 

Turkey Bacon does not have the crispness of cooked bacon, the texture is closer to fried thin slices of ham. But the Turkey Bacon BLT still rules. 

Small 4-slice packages of real Bacon still show up at my local Dollar Tree. And 4 slices are just enough for a sandwich or two. 

Lettuce and tomato are affordable. I even find small jars of mayo cheaply. 

Make a BLT with any favorite bread. Of course, I get mine from the day-old bargain bin at my local supermarket, Ralphs. White, wheat, sourdough, or rye...go for it. 

A BLT is constructed with toasted bread. I used a popup toaster so both sides of each slice are crunchy.

I usually fry my Bacon slices, but you can bake them as well. I learned to bake bacon at a lower temperature, about 325 degrees or less, so the bacon grease doesn't get all over the place (you could loosely cover the bacon with parchment paper, too.)

Turkey Bacon

How do you assemble your BLT? Is Bacon on the bottom or top? How about 2 slices of bacon on top and 2 slices on the bottom. Any way you stack it will work! 

My video recipe is just a reminder for you about how tasty a BLT Sandwich is - go ahead and revisit a real American Diner classic, and don't forget the Campbell Tomato Soup...from the can (they are now low in sodium.)

BLT Sandwich - VIDEO             Play it here, video runs 2 minutes, 36 seconds.

My YouTube video link for viewing or embedding, just click here.

Ingredients (one sandwich)

• Bacon - 2 to 3 slices. Enough to cover a slice of bread. Regular bacon or any favorite substitute.
• Bread - 2 slices. Any type you like. I toast mine.
• Lettuce - a leaf of lettuce, just large enough to cover the bread. Okay to shred or chop lettuce.
• Tomato - a couple of slices, depending on the size of the tomato. Enough to cover a slice of bread. Okay to use sliced cherry tomatoes.
• Mayonnaise - Apply on the inside of one or both slices of bread.

Directions

Start by frying or baking bacon slices. If you are using a substitute like Turkey Bacon then add a teaspoon of oil to a frying pan so Turkey Bacon does not stick to the pan. 

Fry bacon until crisp on both sides. Usually takes about 5 minutes in total.

As bacon cooks, slice tomato and wash lettuce leaf if necessary. Pat dry or shake off excess water from the cleaned lettuce leaf. 

You can toast the bread just before the bacon is done cooking. Toast bread slices as browned as you like.

To assemble BLT, just smear mayo on toast on one or both slices. 

Stack lettuce, tomato, and cooked bacon in any order you like. 

Fried Baloney Sandwich

 I've been returning to childhood recipes lately to see if they hold up. And you can't get much more of a flashback sandwich than a Fried Baloney Sandwich.

It's been years since I've dined on Baloney. I remember having it fried then slipped between slices of white bread, with a smear of mayo. These days I like mustard on most of my sandwiches.

Back in the day, almost every household packed them for a school lunch at least once or twice a week. And they were our goto sandwich for a quickie bite on the weekend, after terrorizing the neighborhood (okay, maybe just making a lot of noise with our next-door friends.) It was quick and easy to fix by our haggard mom and dad.

Well, how does it hold up today for this senior citizen? Damn well, thank you. Plus these days you can get almost healthy Baloney with reduced salt, and nitrates and made with low-fat Turkey. Normally, Baloney is made with beef or pork, or a combination of the two. I made my Fried Baloney Sandwich with Turkey Bologna.

Turkey Baloney tastes just like beef (or a beef/pork mix) Baloney. But you do need a little oil in the frying pan as there is less fat in the poultry meat mix. It will stick to the pan without oil. You can use a non-stick pan to leave out oil.

Baloney comes in thick or regular sliced (thin). Of course, you get more slices in packages of regular sliced.  

One peculiar effect of frying Baloney is that the meat bubbles up like an inflated balloon. I now remember how we made 2 or 4 slices from the outer edge to about halfway to the center of the Baloney slice to keep it from bubbling up. 

You want the frying Baloney to brown on the total surface for that extra intense fried flavor. For my version of Fried Baloney, I make an "X" slice in the middle of the Baloney and then press the bubble down, this way the round shape of the Baloney remains.

Since store-bought Baloney is cooked, all you are doing is heating it up for a minute or two. 

Baloney's origins start with Mortadella from Italy. There is a city in Italy called Bologna. Original recipe variations for Bologna go back to Roman times with cured sausage first spiced with myrtle berries. That flavor profile still prevails today. 

Many countries have their own version of Bologna. Modern American Bologna is thought to have started with German immigrants early last century.

In Italy, Bologna is called Mortadella. American Bologna has a similar texture. The main difference is Mortadella has white fat pieces embedded into a slice, while in modern Bologna the fat is reduced and mixed into emulsified meat - it's uniform in color and texture.

Any way you slice it, my Fried Baloney Sandwich may bring memories of schoolyard lunches - for the good or bad?

Fried Baloney Sandwich - Video   Play it here, the video runs 1 minute, 54 seconds.

My YouTube video link for viewing or embedding, just click here. 

Ingredients

• 1 or 2 slices of Baloney. I fry the baloney. Use any type of baloney or bologna.
• 2 slices of Bread - any favorite bread.
• Mustard - I smear mustard on a slice of bread and the fried Baloney.
• 1 teaspoon Oil - for frying Baloney. Baloney may stick to a non-greased pan. 

Directions

There's nothing much to this recipe. 

Lightly oil a frying pan or grill. Over medium heat fry baloney until lightly browned. It will take a minute or two on each side of the Baloney.

Assemble the Fried Baloney Sandwich any way you like. I add mustard to a slice of bread and on the fried Baloney. Okay to use any favorite condiments like ketchup and mayo.

Sliced lettuce, tomato, and pickle are extra sandwich toppings.