Next Up...

Ruebens.

And strawberry shortcake.

But not together.



Now, I love me a good rueben. I've had my fair share, too. The best ones I've had come from Omaha, and the worst one I've had comes from Alabama (it involved corned beef from a can...enough said?). This one definitely ranked up there with my good old Nebraska sandwiches.

Point-cut corned beef briskets were on sale dirt cheap at the grocery store last week, so I picked one up. Sounded like something good to throw in the crock pot on a busy Saturday. Plus, I like to surround myself with things that remind me of Nebraska on days the Huskers play on TV, and ruebens fit the bill.

I rinsed the meat (a must, in my opinion), covered it with water in the crock, turned it to low and let it cook for 8 hours.

After the 8 hours was up, I let it rest on the counter for an hour before putting it in the fridge for and hour. Once it was cool enough, I thinly sliced it with a super sharp knife and layered it on the sandwich.

The sandwich construction is important to me. Things must go in a certain order (kind of like I must always put the ketchup next to the top half of the hotdog bun, and the mustard next to the bottom half, but I digress...). It should go: bread, swiss cheese, corned beef, 1000 Island dressing, sauerkraut, bread.

It just tastes best this way. Trust me.

And make sure, like with all good grilled sandwiches, you butter the outside of the bread all the way to the edge. You want the bread to get nice and brown and crispy all over.

And don't turn the heat up too high! You want the cheese to have a chance to get super melty so that it oozes over the meat and holds the sandwich together.

Can't forget the importance of the bread itself, too. It must be marble rye. No other bread will do.

Can you tell how much I love ruebens? Have I rambled on long enough?

Moving on...



I'll pretend you can't tell how overdone the top of the shortcake is. And don't even ask about the bottom...I hate my oven...

I had a pint of strawberries from the last co-op to use, and I've never made a shortcake before, so I thought I'd give it a go.

The instructions say to use a food processor to get the flour, sugar and butter to a coarse meal, but I don't have a food processor. I chopped the butter up into small pieces, then let my hand mixer do the rest.

I have to adjust the cooking temps and times for every recipe that requires me to use the oven. For some reason, everything cooks super fast in there (I assume it runs hot, but have not proven this theory yet). So I lowered the temp 25F, and checked them before the minimum cooking time, but they were still a little too brown. Grr.

And I did not make my own sweetened whipped cream. You can probably see the star shape from the aerosol version I used.

Overall, this was an okay recipe. Okay in that it tasted "okay", not that it's "okay" for you...it certainly isn't.

I think I'll stick to strawberries and whipped cream (aerosol or otherwise) over angel food cake for now.