Mini Sandwich Bar

We have had no shortage of delicious meals in Pine C. In fact, I may even go so far as to say that EVERY NIGHT we ate a yummy meal, scrumptious leftovers, or a salad made by a creative genius (not to brag...but I am a true salad artist). So, choosing a favorite meal would be a difficult and daunting task for me if it weren't for the accidentally-awesome sandwich bar that took place at our almost-failed grill-out.

Dinner parties are not a rare occurrence for us. We love to cook, we love friends, we love to give (typical Leos), and we love Sunset Blush, so dinner parties are an obvious outlet for our passions and skills. Although never planned out very far in advanced, our dinner parties usually have a fairly reliable turnout and we have plenty of food to go around with minimal leftovers. Of course, one day when we decided to host a grilling FEAST, it seemed for awhile that no one was going to show up, and the three of us (Me, Robert, and our dear pseudo-roommate, Isabelle) would be stuck eating/preserving a copious amount of chow. Fortunately, the universe is on our side, and at the very last minute our wonderful friends showed up to enjoy our feast with us.

This meal was kind of an unplanned accidental miracle. Earlier in the day we baked some rosemary bread (our first REAL bread of the summer) adapted from this recipe. We doubled the recipe (these loaves are tiny), used olive oil in stead of margarine, and replaced white flour with wheat flour to give it a nice rustic look. I've tried this recipe with both olive oil and butter, and much preferred the texture and taste of the dough when I used olive oil. Butter made it SUPER sticky. 

Rising Dough

Fresh out of the oven. Yum!

The grilling part of our evening (which almost ended in a piney, firey disaster, thanks to my pyromania) consisted of drizzling sliced sweet potatoes, red peppers, portobello mushrooms and eggplant with olive oil, lightly salting, and then poppin' on the grill until cooked through. In the future, it would probably be wise to roast the sweet potatoes a bit in the oven before grilling because by the time they were cooked all the way through, the outside was pretty charred. Personally, I'm a fan of the charred sweet potato, but others may not be as enthusiastic about the burnt taste as I am.

Yummm. So many veggies!

Isabelle: Grill master extraordinaire 

The rest of the meal just naturally fell into place. Isabelle whipped up some delicious guacamole (recipe to be included in a future post?) to eat with chips and we had some fancy cheeses from the farmers market (including a brie, a gorgonzola, and a pepper jack), so after the veggies were done grilling, the obvious thing to do was to make miniature sandwiches! Amanda had received a peach pepper and a garlic onion jam for her birthday (classic foodie gift), so we brought those out, set up a buffet-like table, and let our guests treat themselves to homemade, personalized, vegetarian sandwiches!

My sandwich (I was only able to indulge in one, having non-stop munched all day) consisted of guacamole, portobello mushroom, gorgonzola, and some peach pepper jam. So tasty!

Robert's open-faced baby sandwich! Guacamole, eggplant, cheese, and red pepper.

For dessert we had some decadent brownies and graham-cracker cupcakes with a lemon icing. 

This dinner was a beautiful thing because everything just fell into place. We made foods that sounded yummy on their own, then realized how wonderful they would be combined and ended up with a fun, versatile, and healthy sandwich bar. Couldn't have asked for a better grilling experience. 

Have faith in the universe and faith in your friends, because most of the time, everything will be okay. 

-Iris