The horseshoe sandwich.

Springfield, Illinois meets Austin, Texas. Horseshoe sandwich, FGHD style. © Ryan Schierling

I'm sure there are wealthy suburbs of Springfield, Illinois that have more cardiologists per capita than any other city in the United States. I imagine when filling out new patient paperwork, there is a check-box for "Do you eat horseshoe sandwiches? If yes, how many per year?" That information is disclosed to insurance companies, you are deemed "high-risk" and your policy is put under review.

In the summer of 2007, I ate a horseshoe at storied purveyor D'arcy's Pint in Springfield. I was determined to finish it, and after 45 minutes, I did. Moments later, I felt the first tinges of angina. I was told by locals that to thin the blood I needed more alcohol. I ordered a pitcher of Old Style and a cold, wet bar towel for my forehead, and that seemed to do the trick.

Years later, I kept telling Julie I was going to recreate this Illinois staple, and it was going to be glorious. The Texas toast, the hamburger patties, the crinkle-cut fries and that incredible blanket of luxurious, velvety cheese sauce.

She took my braggadocio with a lot of grains of salt, reminding me that the heart never forgets. And yet, I got a crinkle-cutter in my stocking the following Christmas. This week, I finally tied on my apron and took that Springfield regular to Austin-level serious. Honestly, why hasn't Texas adopted this plate? It's right up there with Frito chili pie, chicken-fried steak and eggs with hash browns, and enchiladas Dan Jenkins. 

Homemade Branston® pickle with English cheddar cheese sandwich.

Homemade ploughman's pickle with English cheddar. ©Ryan Schierling

I cannot claim to have invented this sandwich, nor would I. It is a simple cheese sandwich with a legendary dark-brown English chutney-style spread that is bracingly tangy, crunchy, sweet, and a twee bit savory at the same time. If you’re across the pond, it is a sin to eat a cheese sandwich without Branston® pickle.

I am not an Anglophile and I'm not across the pond, but I have been eating pickle and cheese sandwiches for a while now. I came by a jar of Branston® at a shop in Seattle in the late 90s, picked it up out of curiosity – one for me and one as a gift – and have been preaching the gospel of ploughman’s lunch ever since. 

But I never, ever, ever thought to try and make pickle. It’s like making ketchup, or catsup, or whatever. It’s like making butter. It’s like making mayonnaise or mustard. So few hand-make the staples anymore, they just buy them at the grocer. This tart, sweet, "what-the-hell-should-I-do-with-this-mess?" condiment is not for everyone, but the Branston® traditional recipe has been the same for more than 90 years, and pickle fans are legion in the UK. It may be an acquired taste, though I also believe it's a very geographically-defined and refined taste. 

Tuna sandwich with white beans and radish.

Tuna with white beans, radish and capers. © Ryan Schierling

There are days when I crave the tuna salad sandwich from my childhood – tinned, chunk light tuna mixed with mayonnaise and sweet relish, on thin slices of whole wheat bread. It's a simple sandwich to make, and it always tastes exactly the way I remember it. 

Julie has zero frame of reference for tuna salad, because she never had it as a kid, not even once. The first tuna sandwich she was willing to try was my tuna melt with Mexican mint marigold, and this was just in the last few years. There was no cajoling, no "just try it, just one bite, c'mon...it's just tuna, it's not like it's octopus salad..."  She tried it, liked it, and that opened the door just enough for me to wedge in a can of premium yellowfin tuna packed in olive oil. 

Now there are two tonno sandwiches we make regularly at home. This second sandwich is a flavorful, protein-packed tuna salad with cannellini beans, radishes, shallots, capers, parsley and lemon zest. No heavy mayo or sticky-sweet relish, just a refreshing, clean and crunchy tuna salad served on toasted ciabatta rolls. 

Tuna melt with Mexican mint marigold.

Tuna melt with Mexican mint marigold (or tarragon, if you please). © Ryan Schierling

Tuna, tuna, tuna, tuna... melty cheese, please.

Tuna salad sandwiches. While ubiquitous culturally, they were never a staple in the meat-free household of my childhood. The closest thing to a tuna sandwich in my experience was probably the Nuteena sandwich – but we never had a melty version of that.

Quite frankly, I never found the smell of tuna sandwiches to be appealing. But, then, it could be that my first real contact with the stuff was working in a less-than-fancy food service environment. While I do enjoy trying new things, I have never been one to bother stretching myself for something that doesn't hold the appearance or promise of present or future enjoyment.

By the time Ryan introduced me to the tuna melt, I already had some decent tuna experience under my belt – just nothing of the cheap, tinned variety. I could appreciate the creamy texture of tuna sashimi, and I enjoyed seared tuna as an entree, but chunk light tuna in water was another thing entirely and I was a bit skeptical.

Now, I probably suggest this comforting sandwich more often than he does.

Chopped Salad Sandwich.

Chopped salad sandwich, with and without meat. © Ryan Schierling

Oh yes, I’ve heard the jokes… you know the ones, where a sandwich without meat “is just a salad sandwich.” 

Just…? Oh, no.

Admittedly, I’m rather partial to a Cheddar cheese sandwich with picnic mustard and a tall stack of lettuce, so mostly I’ve just rolled my eyes at the whole salad sandwich notion. While Ryan isn’t particularly meat-centric about his sandwiches, he doesn’t generally opt to put lettuce in them either. A cheese sandwich, for him, is historically just that – good ol' American cheese and mayonnaise between two slices of bread. 

Based on our cheese sandwich profiles, we are apparently unfit to helm a food blog of any import. Too lowbrow? So be it, get over it.

On a whim one day when making us lunch, I decided to give the lettuce a little more purpose. We didn’t have a whole lot on hand to work with, except some provolone and a hearty rustic bread. There was middle ground that needed to be found – something beyond bread and cheese, or bread and cheese and lettuce.

Sauerkraut and caramelized onion sandwich.

The Wilhelm. © Ryan Schierling

I love a great Reuben. It is one of my favorite sandwiches ever, and I will eat a Reuben anywhere, anytime. The sad thing is, I'm usually disappointed by thin and flaccid, flabby and fatty, tasteless corned beef brisket that's been boiled to the point of inedibility. In my opinion, if there's no respect for the meat, you might as well do away with it altogether. 

This... this is a sauerkraut and caramelized onion sandwich. Think about that for a second. It's cabbage and onions. There’s no corned beef, pastrami or turkey, or kielbasa, or any veggie substitutes like tempeh or seitan, because they're not necessary here. 

The boldest flavors of a Reuben are the sauerkraut, the Russian dressing or mustard, the rye and, if you’re going for a non-Kosher version, the Swiss cheese. Unless you’re eating a $20 Katz’s Delicatessen-style meat-pile, the rindfleisch is usually an additional sub-par, thinly-sliced, sad lunchmeat texture at best, and what little flavor it does have gets lost in the fistfight of aggressive tastes the traditional toppings hold. 

This isn’t a Reuben. It's not a West Coast Reuben, or a Montreal Reuben, and it's definitely not a Rachel. 

So, really, what is this meatless punch-in-the-mouth we made? I hereby declare this sandwich The Wilhelm. It’s not the prettiest handful you’ll ever make. If fact, it's downright ugly, but it hits all the right notes for fall – toasty warm and rich, savory, tangy, with hints of sweet and spicy. 

The caramelized onions take a while but are easy enough (see Chips, Dips and Dorks) and if you'd like to try your hand at making sauerkraut, the simple recipe is below. Löwensenf Extra Hot mustard, a staple in our "mustard locker," is great with this sandwich. 

Tomatoes rock.

Tomato carpet at the now defunct Emo's on Red River - Austin, Texas. © Ryan Schierling

My mother always describes eating fresh tomatoes out of a childhood, long-ago family garden – plucked ripe from the vine, warm from the sun, juices dripping down her chin on the first bite. I imagine it is what tomatoes were always supposed to taste like... killer.

Grocery store tomatoes are a sad affair, no matter how organic or fresh. Compared to home-grown, they are typically a little mealy, a little dry, lackluster and lacking in fresh-picked, sun-ripened flavor. When we buy tomatoes outside of our Central Texas growing season – which is to say, November through March – they're usually used for making salsa or tomato jam. The little actual tomato flavor they've got is augmented by other, bolder ingredients. But when it's summertime in Austin – which is to say, April through October – we have two garden plots that are a cage-match tomato free-for-all.

The larger varieties don't usually fare so well. They split before they're ripe, they are susceptible to leaf-footed bugs, and we've found that crafty mockingbirds abscond with bits and pieces of them as soon as they're soft enough to poke a beak in. Sweet little cherry and grape tomatoes are prolific and quick to grow, the medium-sized orange ones do well, and small heirloom varietals have been very successful. We stick with the tried-and-trues, and use them to their tomato-ey fullest while we've got them.

Oklahoma prime rib redux.

Fried smoked baloney sandwich with dill pickle spread. © Ryan Schierling

"What the hell are you smoking?"

I get that question from time to time, especially when I come up with oddities like Chicken-fried Chicken a la King Ranch Chicken or the unholy marriage of gas-station snack-pack jerky and cheese inside a homemade jalapeño popper. But today, since you asked, I'm actually smoking bologna, thank you.

Bologna, Italy would have been my first guess as to the genesis of smoked bologna. They probably figured out every way imaginable to prepare that mishmash meat loaf and I'm betting the guy that perfected it wasn't named Oscar Meyer. But, from what I've heard, Italy didn't want to have anything to do with this bastard-child treatment of their lard-studded mortadella. The Sooner State takes full responsibility for the further preparation of this one.

As with any legendary regional recipe, there are disputes when it comes to origins. Cheap and plentiful, fried bologna sandwiches have been around forever, and everyone from states south of the Mason-Dixon line probably has a fond childhood memory of their favorite version. Smoked bologna is another tall-tale altogether, with a pair of pushpins stuck squarely in a map of Oklahoma – one in Tulsa and the other in Oklahoma City. Stories go back fifty or sixty years about the creation of "Oklahoma prime rib" and wherever it started, you know there had to be some drinking involved. 

New Orleans, new again.

I-10 East, 90+ mph, just out of Houston. Swing-lens panoramic film camera. The flask is in my argyle sock, sucker. (Click for larger.) © Ryan Schierling

I was a teenager the last time I was in New Orleans, insisting on eating nothing but giant bowls of seafood gumbo as our family vacation took us through Louisiana and across the south. I didn't understand the nuances of Creole or Cajun cuisine, or the origins of the dish, and I didn't care. All I wanted was a spicy bowl of something new and exotic – kissed with Louisiana hot sauce – that I couldn't get back home in Kansas. I affectionately remember Marie Laveau's House of Voodoo, the Maison Dupuy's talking bird in the hotel lobby, and window shopping for a Nikon F3HP camera that I couldn't afford on Canal Street. 

Somehow, It's been 25 years since I set foot in the Crescent City. Julie's never been. 

Now that we're living in Austin, it's an eight-hour drive to New Orleans. There are no longer any excuses. Mardi Gras seems a touch over-indulgent for a proper reintroduction, so I make a few impulsive calls and December 30th we point the car east for a celebration of New Year's Eve.

(Anything but) Basic Vegetable Soup.

Vegetable soup with grilled Brie sandwich. © Ryan Schierling

It was September of 2005 – not even winter yet – and I had some crazy horrible flu paired with a ripping sore throat. I'm convinced my mother saved my life by insisting I go to the doctor. She had a hunch it was strep, so she gets credit for that crud not progressing into heart or kidney damage which could have killed me dead.

When I was finally feeling human enough to trade in my fuzzy slippers for proper shoes, I got a visit from my friend Jane. It was from her I learned of this magical vegetable soup she used to ward all manner of evil illness in her household. I had to know more.

The recipe she shared has become a Fall and Winter staple in our home. It is the perfect combination of root vegetables, aromatics and greens, all suspended in a savory "chicken soup will cure all that ails you" kind of broth.

Nuteena sandwich.

The impossible-salad sandwich. © Ryan Schierling

This is a sandwich you have never heard of. Chances are, it is a sandwich you will never make.

Not because you don't want to, but because the main ingredient was discontinued in 2005. Nuteena was the only non-meat analog product in the Worthington / Loma Linda line, which included alternatives to pork, beef, chicken and – strangely enough – scallops.

Unknown to us at the time, Julie and I quite possibly used the last can of Nuteena in existence back in 2008. 

We were in Hawaii, house-sitting and hungry after a morning of snorkeling. Perusing the cupboards, she found a single, solitary can of Nuteena, which instantly took her back more than 20 years. 

Julie, raised vegetarian, had eaten Nuteena sandwiches since she was a kid. It was part of her history and she'd all but forgotten about it. As a consummate carnivore, I had no idea what to make of the pale brown, faintly nutty loaf, and I wouldn't have had the faintest what to do with it. But, I consider myself a fairly adventurous eater and was intrigued by such a strange product. What "salad" sandwich was Nuteena supposed to be replacing for vegetarians? Tuna salad? Chicken salad? I've heard of peanut butter and pickle sandwiches, but this was just bizarre. Mixing the stuff with mayo and onion and dill pickle, it looked like a simple tuna or chicken salad, but it certainly didn't taste like anything I'd ever eaten before.

The sandwich days of summer.

Blackened salmon with caper remoulade and red slaw. © Ryan Schierling

Ah, the salad days of summer. Who can forget those times of carefree frivolity and youthful enthusiasm, of innocence and sweet naiveté?

Back in the moderate month of May, we tackled five cucumber salads in five days. It was the perfect prelude to summer preparation. Now, we're in the thick of it in Austin – 100-plus-degree days, the sun beating down like a white-hot smith's hammer on our garden plots, perspiration aplenty. We spend cooler evening-time hours on the deck drinking aguas frescas and the occasional ice-cold wheat beer mixed with Limonata. Dinners are small, fresh – and while usually thrown together – well-planned for a minimum of ingredients. So we try to let those ingredients shine.

We're on to the sandwich days of summer.

And tonight, the salmon is King, dirtied with a little blackened seasoning and cooked on a ripping hot cast-iron skillet on the grill. Individual baguettes are split and toasted, brushed with a caper and parsley remoulade and adorned with a bright slaw of red cabbage and red onion. This easy summer fish sandwich couldn't ask for anything more.

My coleslaw can beat up your coleslaw.

BFF on a bun. Slaw on pulled pork with mustard sauce. © Ryan Schierling

There is only one coleslaw recipe in this household. I will admit, we have prepared others on a whim, when experimenting with dishes that seemed like they'd benefit from a crunchy, slightly sweet and tangy cabbage salad on the side. As much as I love cabbage in all forms, none of them stuck.

This one, I wrote down for the first time in 2005. I don't remember how long I'd been making it before it was finally put to paper, but full of bluster and bravado on an old blog, I branded it Ryan's Bad Ass Coleslaw. Somehow the moniker stuck. If I had to rename it now, in 2012, I might be a little more humble. I'd call it... Ryan's Bad Ass Coleslaw. Hey, we're all proud of our children, right?

Alright, sorry, it is a nice slaw, and it's a perfect barbecue side. It also has no mayonaisse, which is a sticking point for some coleslaw traditionalists, but mayo weighs down a lot of picnic dressings and I wanted to keep this as light as possible to give the cabbage, carrots, green apple and jalapeños center stage. The simple dress for this salad is a mixture of cream, apple cider vinegar, honey or agave nectar, and salt. That's it. That's all it needs.

Unless you wanted a little help from Bad Ass Coleslaw's friends – pulled pork and mustard sauce. 

That's it! The ultimate ice cream sandwich.

Homemade It's-It. © Ryan Schierling

There was a time a few years ago when I did a brief stint as an ice cream sandwich trafficker. I only had one customer, and I didn't make a nickel in profit. But, then, I would have been hard-pressed to get a whole case of this sinful confection into my little freezer had I not fobbed my good fortune onto another willing party. It's a tough habit to kick when your "customer" is equally enthusiastic about getting their hands on the good stuff.

The only way to get It's-Its in Seattle was by ordering a case from the local Cash & Carry and waiting a few weeks. Had a nearby grocery store not stepped up to the plate and started distributing, well… who knows how long I would have continued dealing. 

Precious and exclusive – it's the way some food items seem determined to remain. There's always that one food that is so regional, and so perfect, that when you find yourself located outside the reach of its geographic distribution area you come to crave it terribly. Finding It's-Its outside of the San Francisco Bay Area is about as difficult as finding a Melty Bar outside of Oshkosh or a boozy kirsch cordial outside of the European Union. You either have to know people to get them, or pay a fortune to have them shipped.

The first time I had an It's-It was as a college student living in California's Napa Valley. I'd be willing to bet that almost anyone who knows what these are have either lived in California at some point, or know someone who has. They are particularly regional and decidedly delicious. No other ice cream sandwich comes close; there's just something about the cookie that makes this treat amazing. The vanilla ice cream flavor is the classic iteration of this confection and my favorite.

After three years here in the great state of Texas, the summer heat and the hankering for an It's-It finally got the better of me. When I realized that having a case shipped to Texas 'overnight' would set me back $87, I decided it was time to work out my own version.

Cucumber salad #3.

Cucumber salad... sandwich? © Ryan Schierling

This will be the only time you ever get a salad sandwich out of me. Mark my words.

I'll make tuna salad, egg salad or even a vegetarian deviled-ham salad (no, for really and seriously), but straight-up salad sandwich reminds me too much of a certain worldwide sub-sandwich chain's Veggie Delight, circa 1991. When you're a poor college student, sometimes the bread and vegetables is all you can afford. Extra lettuce, please!

But this is one of those light, refreshing summer meals that needs no meat. Nothing more than some warm, fresh flatbread, a liberal spackling of homemade hummus and a few spoonfuls of this horiatiki-inspired cucumber salad.

Fold it up like a taco, make sure you've got plenty of napkins, and tuck in.

Cucumber salad, Greek-style

2 cucumbers, peeled, center seeds removed, diced
2 medium tomatoes, cored and diced
1/2 of a small red onion, diced
1 small green bell pepper, seeded and diced
juice of 1 lemon
1 tablespoon fresh oregano, minced
4 ounces feta cheese, crumbled
12 pitted kalamata olives, halved
a pinch of kosher salt, to taste

In a medium-sized bowl, mix the cucumber, tomato, red onion and green pepper. Add a pinch of salt, the juice of 1 lemon and give everything a good toss. Add the oregano, olives, half the feta and mix it all up. When you're ready to serve, crumble the remaining feta on top of the salad.

Our hummus

1 19-ounce can cannellini beans, drained and rinsed
1 15-ounce can garbanzo beans, drained and rinsed
1 clove garlic
juice of 2 lemons
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 tablespoon crushed red pepper flakes
3/4 cup olive oil
2 tablespoons tahini
a good pinch of kosher salt

Using a food processor, chop the garlic. Add the cannellini, garbanzo beans and lemon juice. Pulse until a very thick paste begins to form. Add the tahini, cumin, red pepper flakes and salt and continue to mix. While the hummus is pureeing, add a thin, steady stream of olive oil into the food processor until everything is nice and creamy. Let the food processor run for a couple of more minutes, then spoon hummus into a bowl and refrigerate until you're ready to eat.

Picadillo Joe.

A hot mess, no matter what you call it. © Ryan Schierling

A few weeks ago, I got to thinking about soup sandwiches. Not soup or sandwiches, or soup with a sandwich, but a home-cooked sloppy-joe knock-off that I remembered from childhood. There was ground beef, probably some tomato paste and worcestershire, and a can of Campbell's condensed vegetable soup (with the alphabet pasta!), cooked down into a thick, saucy filling and spooned onto cheap, white hamburger buns. It wasn't a Manwich, it wasn't a sloppy joe. It was a soup sandwich, and it was a messy delight. 

I was probably feeling more nostalgic than actually craving a sloppy joe, or whatever you want to call it, but I just couldn't let it go. I stood at the grocery store looking at the cans of Manwich sauce and the generic sloppy joe sauce, and thought that, despite not having eaten a soup sandwich in more than 20 years, I had to be able to do better than a pre-packaged, super-corn-syruped sauce that was basically nothing more than spiced ketchup. I thought about similar ingredients and the textures and flavors I was hankering for. I imagined making a grown-up sloppy joe that, despite a few challenging additions, even kids would want to eat. 

I started thinking about picadillo, and the similarities and differences between the Spanish, Mexican and Cuban versions of the dish. 

I was thinking too much. 

I mean, picadillo is a peasant food no matter which country it comes from, and not much more than a ground meat hash served over rice, or scooped into a tortilla. The list in my muddled head kind of clarified itself after that – I grabbed a pound of 80/20 ground chuck from the butcher and a container of PikNik Original Shoestring Potatoes from the chips and salty snacks aisle. 

Wait, what? 

An essential boule.

Tarragon egg salad sandwich. © Ryan Schierling

Nostalgia… I feel like I've been swimming in it for months. Beginning with the old family recipes from our potato salad series this summer, my personal food-flow has seemed a constant stream of vintage recipe exploration. Lately, I've been feeling stuck in a quagmire of remembrance about food that has stood for more than a generation – however fascinating the narrative, quirky or delicious – and I was just starting to get uncomfortable.

The thing is, I genuinely adore those old recipes! I appreciate them like I appreciate an antique buffet with beautiful panels of quartersawn oak or a mahogany dressing chest with clean art deco curves. I treasure good things well made and believe they should be preserved. It's part of my fabric.

But while I deeply respect the craftsmanship and history of past days, I also can't ignore the innovations of the now, and the impulse to explore my own curious tangents and creative impulses.

And, so, the catalyst for my unsticking... bread. Well, bread and a favorite sandwich made with it.

My springboard was a surprise gift in the form of one of the most divine loaves of bread made in all of North America. If you live in the Pacific Northwest, you may have come to take this loaf for granted, as it is almost an "everyday" loaf to those in the know. Available at fine local grocers and at Trader Joe's, it is The Essential Baking Company's beautiful boule which is simply known as the Rosemary Diamante. This is no ordinary rosemary bread. It is an organic loaf that has the most amazing rustic texture with generous bubbles, large visible pieces of rosemary and a salted top that is so good you could cry. It is perfection toasted and buttered or simply mopping up an over-easy egg. With a creamy soft cheese such as brie, it could just be your whole dinner.

But the way I love it most dearly is with my egg salad. 

Adventure day.

Thai Fresh. © Ryan Schierling

Sundays are days off. Typically, historically, it is the only day Julie and I both share as a day together, a day of rest – so we try to create as much unrest as possible. We set out, we adventure. We cross things, locations, off our list.

We were southie Thai in our jaunty beginning today, craving something spicy, fresh and close to home. Just so you know, we bring a wealth of Pacific Northwest experience with "one-to-five" stars when ordering Thai food. So, we were a little surprised that both the green curry and the coconut vermicelli salad we ordered at Thai Fresh were extremely mild. This is Texas, and historically, stereotypically, Texans like things hot. Homemade green curry in this household is a fearsome, fiery beast, that will politely knock on your front door with a coconut milk, Thai basil, fish sauce and palm sugar smile, and then burn the house down and dance in the cinders. While solid fare, I imagine the Thai Fresh cuisine reflects the location and neighborhood, which is, training-wheels-on, exotic take-out experience that one can heat up in the microwave of one's expensive, relatively unused stainless steel kitchen after a long day at work. It is Thai, and it is local and very fresh, but you won't see too many Thai families making a trip to south Austin to eat there. It's certainly a valuable resource for south residents who want very quick Thai food in an convenient coffee shop/deli setting.

Curiosity satisfied, we moved north to MT Market with our A-level shopping list.

(L) Dragonfruit. (R) Goo Fish. © Ryan Schierling

I have friends that would walk through the automatic front doors at MT Market and balk immediately at the smell. It is… a foreign scent, an aroma that you don't associate with American grocery stores. Mostly (mostly) fresh fish, a big smack of fresh pork, beef and assorted offal, and some weird-ass pickled vegetables in tubs that I just can't stay away from. We are there for Vietnamese young green rice (com dep), Julie's strawberry cream biscuits, daikon radish and fat carrots, bird chiles and whatever else looks promising.

Julie gravitates toward fresh-cut-in-half durian fruit, picking it up, smelling it, making me smell it. She relates it to fine, sweet, stinky cheese. I am taken aback, recalling the Andrew Zimmern 'Bizarre Foods' episode where he visibly gags, choking on durian. Rotten onion fruit!?!? Anthony Bourdain apparently digs it, describes it as…"indescribable, something you will either love or despise. ...Your breath will smell as if you'd been French-kissing your dead grandmother." I don't want anything to do with that (just yet), so we move on, selecting some beautiful dragonfruit, sweet potato vermicelli and Maggi seasoning. Proper baguettes for banh mi are down the way at Baguette House.

After a bit of a layover at Goodwill in the housewares section, we drive back through downtown Austin proper and then point east on a single digit street with the intention of visiting Bits & Druthers for some English fish and chips and a bit of poutine. Frustratingly enough, the whole fickle food trailer park is closed, again. We tried last Monday, with no luck. Sunday, apparently, is no better, so we wind back downtown. And then as we are driving, after months without, the rains come. Brilliantly, dark blue clouds pull up, pull in, and surprise pedestrians, cyclists and motorists alike. The temperature drops 20 degrees, the humidity spikes, and a warm, wet blanket is plunked down on downtown Austin.

Owl bldg. © Julie Munroe

Wipers on, we decide on drinks, and perhaps a sandwich, at the Tiniest Bar in Texas, and Lucky's Puccias. The bar-side trailer, offering Italian wood-fired handfuls, is an unassuming respite with simple, well-thought ingredients. My sandwich is proscuitto-salty, mozzarella-creamy, tomato-acidic and arugula-spicy, all tucked in a smoky, fire-kissed envelope. Julie's vegetarian Rustica is a mild, delicate sandwich with simple flavors allowed to shine without heavy-handed embellishment. 

Lucky's Puccia, w/ Lone Star. © Ryan Schierling

Our garden is being watered for us, we have an open tab at a teeny, tiny bar (perhaps the teeniest, tiniest bar), and the puccias are warm and delicious.

It has been another good, good adventure Sunday, but now it is time to get home to the cats, and the laundry, and to make preparations for the week ahead. 

SILF.

Shooter's sandwich. © Ryan Schierling

I'm not exactly sure when the term "SILF" entered the food lexicon, but it's been bandied about on sandwich-enthusiast websites, sandwich-heavy photo threads, and even graced a t-shirt over at BustedTees. I have no doubt the acronym has been used at some point to describe the fabled "Shooter's Sandwich," a glorious and grand old Edwardian tradition of the highest order.

Often described as the "best sandwich ever," this meat-heavy hunter's special is a visually-stunning creation, and has reverent, fervent followers all over the web. When Julie sent me the link to the UK Guardian story detailing how to create this mythical beef beast, all I could do was text back "ME. WANT." and make a grocery list.

Once I got home and started working the meez, I began to think about how this was actually going to come together. A hearty, crusty loaf of artisan bread was the vessel, a pair of nice steaks were the precious contents, and a sauteed mess of mushroom, garlic and shallot (hit with some worcestershire sauce and a splash of brandy) bound everything together. Add some whole grain mustard and a slathering of horseradish, and this sandwich was shaping up to be a serious punch in the mouth.

I don't want to discount hundreds of years of English tradition, but there were a couple of things about the recipe that bothered me. One, the steaks went into the bread "bowl" hot, not rested. All jus and bloody goodness (I don't mean that in an proper English way, I mean it in a medium-rare way) would soak into the bread, especially the bottom, when this whole thing was pressed overnight. Soggy bread is disgusting, unless you're making stuffing. Two, steaks are eaten with a steak knife for a reason, no matter how tender and juicy they are. Trying to bite through a crusty loaf and a pair of fat steaks with just your front teeth – normal sandwich-eating style – was not going to work.

I put my reservations aside and prepared the sandwich per the recipe's instructions – bread bowl bottom, hot steak, mushroom-shallot mix, hot steak, mustard and horseradish, bread bowl top. I wrapped the whole thing in parchment paper and tied if off with butcher's twine. I placed a cutting board on top of it and set our Kitchen Aid stand mixer on top of the cutting board to make like the trash compactor scene in Star Wars.

This was either going to be a brilliant hat-tip to Edwardian times, or it was going to be a soggy, chewy, unfortunate waste of a good loaf of bread and two steaks.

A year of plenty.

Shredded pork and pork chop with rice and egg. © Ryan Schierling

Exactly one year ago, Julie and I were on the road from Seattle, pointed south. We arrived in Austin on November 1 – exhausted, relieved and, in my case, with a touch of the collywobbles. I blame the latter on my penchant for strawberry milk and beef jerky when traveling, but that's entirely another story. 

A month prior to the move date, we flew to Austin to find our place to live – our place to land. We spent three frustrating days scouring the city and surrounding areas north, south, east and west. Nothing was clicking for us. During an excursion north, we stopped at a little Vietnamese restaurant in a beat-down strip mall. Hungry, a little irritable, and unsure we were making the right decision in moving halfway across the country, Thanh Nhi was a welcome oasis. The owners were bend-over-backwards gracious and effusively friendly. 

We had bánh mi sandwiches that were easily as authentic and satisfying as any we'd had in Seattle, and decided then that we should also be hunting for the things that we wanted most in a new town – the important resources that were nearest and dearest to us. We found Fiesta, we found MT Supermarket, we found Indian and Pakistani grocers, we found Phoenicia. We researched farmer's markets and began sourcing local gardening centers. We began to see the validations of diversity we were looking for, and that's when the sea change began to occur.