We just had a rather large discussion about fluff sandwiches. It seems that most of the readers who ate them (East and Southern folks primarily with smattering of people mostly east of the Mississippi) believed them to be their favorite sandwich from childhood.
What was your favorite sandwich from childhood? What is your favorite sandwich NOW?
(I’ll answer in the comments)
when i was younger i wasn't the hugest fan of sandwiches. usually it was grilled cheese or peanut butter and jelly.
nowadays, i still love peanut butter and jelly as a midnight snack–grilling it on each side like a grilled cheese. makes it all melty like a dessert. when i get a deli sandwich i always go with turkey, pepper jack, mustard, lettuce, and pickles on sourdough. mmmm.
My favorite sandwich as a kid was either warmed braunshwieger and a slice of american on white, or cotto salami and butter, also on white. Nowadays, its deli roast beef with cheddar and mayo on rye, though the meat and cheese can be switched out with other kinds, i just REALLY like rye bread.
Grilled cheese, but it had to be on white bread! And I never ate the crust, too icky!
As a kid: Peanut butter and etc (jelly, honey, banana, apple…), salami with mustard on rye, and my grandma's pastrami sandwiches (loaded with lettuce, pickles, and tomato from the garden). I didn't get to eat junk food as a kid, and I rarely do as an adult (with the exception of dessert every night, which I firmly believe in)
As an adult: everything named above, but also club sandwiches from diners, BLTs from home, grilled cheese (especially provolone or mozzarella with tomato and fresh basil–oh help!), and leftover sandwiches: if there's leftover potroast, I make a mash using the cold potatoes, onions, and carrots to spread on the bread, and then add cold pot roast. If it's leftover roast chicken, I shred it up and pile it on a roll drowned in BBQ sauce. And who could forget the Thanksgiving sandwich–turkey, mashed potatoes, and cranberry sauce loaded between two slices of bread. Heaven!
i've always been a huge fan of pb&j but i love chicken or turkey with pesto and tomato, but i'm going vegetarian starting on monday (because monday is a good day to start things) so i will just be having pesto and tomato. im also a fan of grilled cheese sandwiches.
as a child i loved ham and cheese sandwich with cheetos. i would put the cheetos in between the bread to give it a crunch. today, i love a mozarella and tomato sandwich.
as a kid, i loved "croque-monsieur" sandwiches (2 pieces of white bread, with ham in the middle and cheese on the outside..fried in the pan) served with tomato sauce! yum! just re-thinking about it…makes me want one right now 😀 otherwise my favorite sandwich nowadays would be a panini with goat cheese + tomato slices inside!
Michele do you have an in-law named Beth, I may work with her. Store bought is not nearly as good as homemade benadictine and no it doesn't have to be green or served on white bread anymore. I do still make it and eat it on occasion, but with tomatoes and lettuce on really good bread. I watch the big race on the TV.
I had 2 favorite sandwiches as kid – PB&B (Peanut Butter & Bananas) and the other was fried egg with mayo.
I haven't had a PB&B in years, but I still love the egg & mayo sandwich.
I had a love of peanut butter and applesauce. I tried it a few years ago and the texture was appealing but I can see the logic of it. I still love apples and peanut butter – ate that for lunch on Friday.
Smoked ham and swiss on rye with mustard as a kid (ate a ton of these with my lunch in school). Still fond of that sandwich, but now I'd say it's a BALT (bacon, avocado, lettuce and tomato) on thick sourdough, but only with decent tomatoes. It's not worth eating out of season.
I grew up eating bologna on white bread with ketchup, then it was chipped ham with ketchup or mayo (for those who don't know, chipped ham is a PA thing, thinly sliced ham, so thin you can see through it, preferred brand is Isaly's).
Now that I've "grown up", I prefer ham with cheddar and BBQ sauce, preferably made by someone other than myself, like McAlllister's Deli or Honeybaked Ham.
I also like grilled cheese sandwiches and a summer favorite is fresh tomatoes on toast with butter, salt and pepper.
Kid- Peanut Butter and Strawberry Jelly, Honey, or Marshmallow Fluff.
Adult- Chicken salad (chunks of chicken breast, pecans, sliced red grapes, celery, salt, pepper, and mayo), on ciabatta or crosant; beer brat on brochen; and turkey, provologne, and cesar salad (lettuce, dressing, and a little bit of cheese) on ciabatta.
Back Then: My mom made me egg salad sandwiches, and my brother made me bologna sandwiches with mayo whenever I got hungry.
Now: I love chicken salad sandwiches. Actually I'll eat any sandwich as long as it has mayo in it =D
i ate some weird sandwiches when i was a kid. when i was in grade school my favorite sandwiches were sweet and sour sauce with bread and butter pickles. as a teenager i liked peanut butter and green olives. now my tastes are a little more normal, my favorite sandwich is thin sliced turkey with extra sharp cheddar cheese, honey mustard, onions, and pickles.
As a kid, my favorite sandwiches were cream cheese with grape jelly on white bread, or peanut butter & crispy bacon on toast. (sounds weird but is DELICIOUS – the peanut butter melts on the hot toast – yummm!)
Now I would rather eat a turkey sandwich with bacon & avocado on toasted whole grain bread, or homemade egg salad with fresh dill & chopped black olives on crackers.
Sandwiches are a great way to get all your nutrients – protein, grain, veggies, even dairy. I don't have a favorite – but I have favorites depending on my mood. Sometimes PB&J, sometimes Subway or Jimmy Johns turkey sandwiches, sometimes tuna. Today I made a chicken salad sandwich on whole grain bread and sprinkled chopped carrots, broccoli and cauliflower on top of the chicken salad instead of lettuce. I love meals that mash different foods together!
I am the latecomer to this party with my late comment!
I love Tuna Salad Sandwiches but I am so fussy about what goes in my tuna.
But the best deli sandwich? Salami and Provolone, Mustard and Mayonaise, Lettuce and Tomato. On a roll is always best. A little cured meat never hurt anyone. I usually tell the guy making the sandwich to put half as much meat on it as he usually does. Then everything is in balance.
Peanut Butter and Banana! Though I loved good old turkey and mayonnaise (or, I should say, miracle whip) just about any day.
This post made me kind of sad. When I was 12, my parents were going through a nasty separation and my dad took custody of me. He didn't pay any attention to feeding my properly and so for a year or two, I lived off of microwave TV dinners. Sometime around then, the movie Harriet the Spy came out, which featured Harriet's favorite sandwich: tomato and mayonnaise. I tried it out one day after school and liked it. So I kept eating them every day, not knowing how unhealthy mayonnaise (or Miracle Whip actually) was. My body shape got really gross. Luckily, I was underweight so it wasn't awful, but I remember for a while, I felt really fat. I had no idea it was because of that sandwich until I was much older.
Favorite now, however, is turkey on whole wheat with bean sprouts, banana peppers, and fresh mozzarella. It's a weird combination, but I love it.
My favorite as a kid was definitely PB&J – more specifically, creamy peanut butter and seedless raspberry jam. I'd eat any bread but pumpernickel, but hands down the best was to make it on leftover rolls (dinner, hot dog, hamburger – didn't matter) from French's, a fantastic local bakery. They sadly closed down awhile back, but I'm expecting to get several dozen hot dog buns from a local grill joint – they sold the recipe to a factory to keep supplying the wholesale stuff, just not retail, and the grill joint will order extra cases for customers! I'm very excited to recreate those sandwiches 🙂
Now, while I still love PB&J, I also love grilled chicken & veggies – that's what I'll get out at sandwich shops. At home, though, it's still usually the peanut butter!
I have always had a special love for sandwiches. As a child, I loved the traditional PB&J or PB & bananas. Another favorite, especially in elementary school, was BLTs. My mom would separately pack the lettuce and tomato so my bread wouldn't get soggy by lunch time 🙂 Our family also has a tradition of post-Thanksgiving sandwiches–wheat or white bread (my dad is the only one who uses white) with leftover turkey, mom's home-made stuffing (it's basically the most incredible stuffing on the planet–filled with celery, onions, and sausage bits amongst a ton of other fantastic spices and seasonings), and Grandma's cranberry relish (it's a mixture of fresh cranberries, fresh squeezed orange, and grated orange zest that macerates in sugar and some other fabulous unknown ingredients). My mouth is absolutely watering!
Today, I still love all of those sandwiches! I have yet to meet a sandwich I don't like. Right now I'm eating everything with roasted red pepper and garlic aioli. It's sooo worth 3 days of garlic breath, the perfect condiment!!!
Thanks so much for all the AMAZING sandwich stories from the past and from the now! I want to eat sandwiches for days now…
In high school, we had a "deli line" in our cafeteria. I think I ate a turkey & mozzerella sandwich on white bread every day – except on Wednesdays, when the sandwich of the day was pastrami. I would get the pastrami on rye bread with mozzerella and a squirt of miracle whip.
My other favorite at that time, and it's still one of my faves, is a roast turkey sandwich…right after Thanksgiving. Usually on white bread, with mayo, thinly sliced onion and a slice of that canned jellied cranberry sauce.
Now…I love the mediterranean Veggie sandwich from Panera. Also, a BLT with fresh tomato (in season only!)
Michele Hays said…
Now, in prep of this post – don't judge me – it was something I learned from my Dad, and it's much better than you think –
Peanut butter and dill pickle. I've always been a fan of more savory applications of peanut butter, I wonder if this is where it started.
YES! I loved this as a kid. My sister still eats this sandwich regularly!
my mom would make BLT's with the tomatoes from the garden. we would eat them all summer until we couldn't stand them anymore! Also, she made onion sandwiches: white bread, mayo, black pepper & sliced onion. yum! Today, it would be a good chicken salad sandwich on whole grain bread and nice big pieces of lettuce.
As a kid- Salami w/mustard.
Now it's a tie between: Turkey, Brie and Green Apple; Turkey, Goat Cheese, Sprouts, Garlic Aoli, and Balsamic; and Mozzerella, Tomato, Basil on a good ciabatta(allowed to soften slightly in the jucies).
As a kid we had chip-chopped ham which we would "fry" in a skillet to make it brown and then wheat bread with mayo and cheese and of course crunched up potato chips to top it off. Also a favorite dutchloaf which now I can't even imagine eating. My friends mom made the BEST chicken salad, she would make a point to make it when she knew I would be over. I still love her for that. As a child I wanted nothing more than to find a lunchable in my lunch and so occasionally my mom would pack me saltines and meat and cheese which she cut into squares and told me that was a homemade lunchable. She always packed us pretty healthy lunches – I remember kids telling me how lucky I was to have a container of cut up watermelon or a peeled orange. I didn't think I was so lucky at the time – seeing everyone else with their Little Debbies and Lunchables – but now I realize how lucky I was.
These days – I love a good BLT or reuben sandwich. I love love love rye bread. I might even eat dutchloaf again if it was on rye. haha
As a kid I liked Braunshwieger on German rye bread (my grandmother was German and got me into that). The other kids thought it was SO GROSS when I brought that to lunch! I also really liked salami on crusty Italian bread. Nothing else on the sandwich but that.
I also loved it when Mom made BLT's as an easy dinner. Especially with homegrown tomatoes.
And of course I liked grilled cheese. As a kid it was whole wheat bread with Kraft singles. Then later I thought of putting ham in it. Now I use real cheese and change up the bread sometimes (sourdough is really good), and I dip it in ketchup. Still good with ham and maybe even some of those garden tomatoes in there.
Oh, and as I kid I also liked PB&J (ONLY with concord grape jelly) or PB and banana, or PB and honey. Always on whole wheat bread. Now I discovered something great, which is PB and hot pepper jelly. I got a huge load of jalapenos one time and made them into jalapeno jelly, and then was trying to figure out what to do with it. Thought about how Thai food sometimes has peanuts and hot peppers, so gave it a go, and it was WONDERFUL. The only thing was it could have been spicier. I'm on the lookout for habanero jelly to try instead.
I bet I would like the peanut butter and pickle other people have mentioned, but I'm thinking I would prefer bread and butter pickles to dills.
Favorite childhood sandwich: peanut butter and grape jelly on wheat bread (my mom bought a brand called "Roman Meal;" not sure if it's even around anymore!)
Favorite current sandwich: I love most sandwiches, but have a particular fondness for BLTs, because they are so rare. They're only worth eating if the tomatoes are in season (late summer)!
Mrs. Q, you would be a fan of my favorite sandwich! There is an organic grocery store near my apartment that has a sandwich department with some of the tastiest concoctions I have ever eaten.
My absolute favorite is the Cha-Town Club, foccacia bread with homemade garlic aioli, swiss cheese, turkey (no sulfates or preservatives), spinach, tomato, and bacon. They place it on a panini grill until the cheese is nicely melted and bubbly and all the flavors blend together. Its absolutely heavenly. I would be hard pressed to find anything better than that.
My favorite sandwich as a kid was probably a mixture of cream cheese, green olives and hard boiled eggs on white bread. As an adult my favorite sandwich is a wheat flat bread with yogurt cheese, smoked turkey, sundried tomatoes and roasted red peppers.
I liked quite a few, but my favorite was/is tomato on wheat w/ mayo. This would also include BLTs. I also had a real passion for banana sandwiches (w/ mayo) as well as PB & banana (no mayo), too. And, roast beef made w/ real roast beef w/ mayo on one side of bread & mustard on the other. Yum!
A couple of unique-ish sandwiches I ate as a child: canned pineapple rings w/ mayo; vienna sausages w/ mayo (pronounced vy-eener here in the South)–not a favorite; and fried bologna sandwiches w/ mayo & mustard. I haven't had any of these in years.
As a child, it would have been deli ham and cheez-whiz, cuz we were usually to poor for that kind of processed expensive stuff!!
Now it would be a whole grain bagel with cream cheese, deli ham and lots of lettuce. A grown-up version of my childhood fave!
Banh Mi Dac Biet
Being Vietnamese, you grew up eating these things and I will still happily eat these now. Various Viet cold cuts (pork, turkey, head cheese) with liver pate. Topped with cilantro, pickled carrots and cucumber all on a toasted french baguette. It doesn't get much better than that.
As a kid it was PB&J with plain potato chips in the middle. (I still love this.)
As a teen, it was PB&J with cool ranch doritos in the middle. (Don't knock it till you try it.)
As an adult, it's a bacon sandwich made with good bacon, a little lettuce and miracle whip (I don't like mayo) on toasted sourdough bread – hold the tomato*. Or maybe honey ham and extra sharp cheddar on a sourdough roll. Yummy!
*I love tomato, but not on my sandwiches. I eat my tomato on the side. Specifically, home grown tomatoes. So good!