“Technically, they’re not sandwiches if they are open-face.”, my teenage boy, who is very technical, corrected me when I called these open-face sandwiches.  He’s right.  To sandwich something is to put it between two other things, right?  But which came first, the noun or the verb?  Hold, please, while I look it up…

Oh my!  Apparently it was the proper noun that came first.  Both are named for the Earl of Sandwich.  So technically…

Open or closed, this was our favorite topper of the open-faced sandwich trio the boys and I shared for lunch today.  Don’t tell my younger that it was the red bell pepper that gave it the fresh, pungent flavor he supremely enjoyed.  He won’t touch them if he knows they’re in a dish.  Sometimes a mom needs to be a little sneaky to get those vitamins into her kids.

I successfully tried this method with zucchini brownies one summer when my garden was giving us an overabundance of near baseball bat sized squash fruits.  That went over fine, even after I told the boys what they were made of, until their friends came over unexpectedly and that was all we had to offer them for dessert.  It wasn’t too cool, I think, to be the kids of the mom with the zucchini-based desserts.

This recipe I’ll hang on to so I can pull it out when we need a little antioxidant boost, as we did today fighting the end of a 48 hour bug.  Well, I hope it’s only 48.  Their lingering sore throats are making me think that we may be rolling over to another day.  At least the fevers are down and the nausea over so that they could sit in the sunny breakfast room and enjoy their “sandwiches” with a cup of tea.

Our other two sandwich toppers were butter and cucumber for one and an arugula and edamame spread for the other.  This garden vegetable was slightly reminiscent of that old pimento cheese spread people were so fond of in the 70’s.  Makes me wonder what would happen if I added more cream cheese and some sharp cheddar.  I’ll bet it would turn into something like that pimento cheese spread from the 70’s that I wasn’t so fond of.  Guess I’ll never be willing to find out.

Ingredients:

2 T sweet onion

1 clove of garlic

1/8 c. carrot pieces

1 T red bell pepper pieces

4 grape tomatoes

1 T butter

1 T cream cheese

1/4 tsp. salt or salt to taste

Freshly ground black pepper

1/4 tsp. paprika

1/4 tsp. dried thyme

I just blended all the ingredients in a little chopper I have, an off-brand of the Magic Bullet, and spread it on thin slices of  French bread.  It would have been good made in the food processor, all whirred to a pulp, but I wanted it just roughly blended on this occasion.

Makes 4 to 5 ounces of spread or around 1/2 c.