MAN-wich! Friday Night "cheater" meals

 So if any of you guys are like me, you're on a diet. You should know I use the word diet sparingly. By diet, I mean I'm conscience of what I eat, and try to avoid the bad stuff. I try to not eat, or drink certain things late at night, and often make a protein shake to satisfy a late night craving (its better than nyquil! it puts me right to bed!). Also, if you're like me, you don't mind "cheating" every so often. By cheating, I don't mean go out order some french fries with cheese sauce and get a big fat juice buttermilk fried chicken sandwich with a garlic mayo and jalepeno poppers. If you're serious about getting fit, these kind of meals should happen rarely to never. But that is just my personal opinion.

So the question, how does E cheat when he wants to treat him self to a glutenous meal? Well if you're going to cheat you want to try to keep your goal in mind as much as possible. Let's keep in mind, if we can "cheat" and still kinda take a step towards our goal, why not! It makes it easier to feel less guilty.


It's Friday night. Before a long night out its always nice to be satisfied, from a hunger standpoint. (cheaper too, and in my case if you're not trying to go out and get bombed it's a nice safety to have a solid base in your belly) So I created these MONSTER sandwiches with my Pops! I stopped by the local grocer and picked up some fresh baked kaiser rolls (4). Picked up some roast beef, and ham. Bacon, and some crisp lettuce to top it off. I already new I had some good condiments at home so I raced home in the snow (very carefully of course) and my Pops was there to lend a hand so we can satisfy this craving sooner!

Immediately we fired up our cast iron flat top. (we own a cast griddle for indoor use. you've seen them, grill on one side and flat on the other. meant to put on top of your stove) Following that my Pops jumped to start the bacon. (so you know, this is so quick to make that by the time the bacon is done, you're building and eating your MAN-wich!)

Since he is doing the bacon I get to do everything else! Since the fresh kaisers aren't sliced, I need to take a serrated knife (use your bread knife. it should be long and have some teeth to it.) and carefully slice these buns in half so we can use them for the MAN-wiches. Bread is sliced, I turn the griddle to medium heat, drizzle with olive oil and toast the insides just till golden brown. I noticed the bread was toasting a little quick for my liking, so I adjusted to heat slightly lower. Once the bread was done, the bacon was close. My Pops took the bread and put a THIN layer of miracle whip on it (you could use mayo, or anything really. Try thousand island if you like rubens) While he was doing that I had my hands full cooking the meat. I enjoy hot sandwiches, so of course for the MAN-wich I browned the deli meat on the flat top as well. So we build this bad boy bottom up:

1. Bun
2. mayo
3. beef
4. mustard
5. pickles (we used just 2 pieces for each. perfect balance is hard to achieve, but we were dang close)
6. bacon (2 ea)
7. ham
8. lettuce (i'm a believer that the more substance to the sandwich the more lettuce you need. So since this sandwich is a monster, we used lots of lettuce. 1 1/2 pieces of leaf lettuce per)
9. Bun

OMG this MAN-wich was so freakin' good. On top of that, it wasn't terribly gross for me. Lots of protein and carbs came to the party tonight. I can't complain with that. The trade off is that I did eat some bacon, and the mayo was a light smear so no shame there.

ENJOY this guilt free cheating meal! Eat with some nice chips. Treat yourself, because you know after eating this, you won't have it again for awhile :)