Kim Gentes

There are times when you have to attend to the important things in life. Today is just one of those days! Recently, I had the opportunity to travel to Canada to be with family. The occasion was for somber reasons (my step dad was having cancer surgery) and family went to help and support him and my mom during the tough time.  Thankfully, the surgery went very well and he was able to come home in about a week after surgery.

Since mom had a bunch of people visiting and a great reason to be thankful, she decided to make a turkey dinner (a-la thanksgiving style). We were all delighted and tried to help out, including helping eat our portion of the wonderful dinner that resulted. While giving thanks was a big part of the evening, the food was great and the next few days we had plenty of wonderful leftovers to enjoy.

One of my favorite things to eat is left over turkey, in the form of dinner roll sandwiches with white meat turkey inside. For me, my traditional sense of eating that simple sandwich is fairly basic- turkey, mustard, pepper and a basic dinner roll. That said, when I mentioned my post-thanksgiving turkey sandwich delights to friends on Facebook, I got officially "chopped" from a few turkey sandwich connoisseurs.

Actually, what I found out was that everyone has their own ideas about great turkey sandwiches. The post thanksgiving tradition seems to have spun off many varied flavors of these tryptophan treats. People began posting their favorite turkey sandwich recipes. I decided to take a walk on the wild-side and made a few of the variations to test their theories.

As you can see from the picture, I decided to test 3 different types of turkey sandwiches. One suggestion was a turkey sandwich with cranberry sauce from the turkey dinner. Another suggestion was stuffing and gravy on turkey in a sandwich. I still liked my standard turkey fare and wanted to add it to the list of possible contestants if I was to compare these. 

I prepared the three sandwiches slightly differently. All of them included warmed turkey and buttered dinner rolls (unheated). The sandwich with stuffing and gravy also had the stuffing/gravy ingredients heated up.  I then took a bite out of each. Guess what? I learned something. Try different things :) .... Here is my final rankings of the sandwich contestants.

1. Stuffing & Gravy Turkey Sandwich- it was hard to admit, but this little sandwich is pretty freaking great. Like a thanksgiving on a bun, it really is delicious. While it's easily the most calories, there is a price to be paid for that luscious taste. Of course, heating things really is what gives it that over the top win for first place.
2. Turkey, Pepper & Mustard Sandwich- My traditional simple turkey and mustard still holds to second place in my taste test. This will vary with your taste of course, but I love it this way.
3. Cranberries and Turkey Sandwich- this one actually tasted better than I thought it would. The coolness of the cranberries is nice and sweet/tart combination of flavors go well with the turkey and bread base. But in the end, for me, it lands at three in this contest.

So what about you? How do you make those post-thanksgiving turkey sandwiches? Post your recipes/stories and tell us what we should try.

And remember, this food tastes best with a lot of thanks and a lot of giving spread liberally across friends and family!

Thankful with you,

Kim Gentes