Category: sandwiches

Flying Saucer in Arlington

Ashley Bischoff3 Comments

I enjoyed hanging out with some of Bryan’s New Jersey chums at The Flying Saucer in Arlington on Saturday. The Flying Saucer is well known for having almost 100 beers on tap (and another 100 available by the bottle), so I really looked forward to trying some of them.

Since they have their entire menu online, I spent some time on Saturday afternoon and cross-referenced their beer list against RateBeer.com’s Top Accessible Beers list — it’s a list of their highest-rated beers with at least 300 ratings (that way, you generally have half a chance of being able to find them).

I realized that there was also the chance that some of The Flying Saucer’s beers may have been highly rated but not by as many reviewers. So, I also checked on every other beer on their menu (which didn’t take as long as you might think, since you can search by brand at RateBeer and it’ll show the ratings for all beers under that brand).

I put all this info in my Palm and headed off. Once there, I ordered a Schneider Aventinus to start. It’s in the 98.3 percentile of beers at RateBeer, but also with 8% alcohol. It was strong, but almost had a creamy texture. It was the type of beer that would go well with food (I had a sandwich, in this case).

I hadn’t eaten dinner beforehand, so I looked over their food menu and ordered a Space Club. It’s described as having “ham, turkey, bacon & tomato with cheddar and jack cheese”. Its description made it seem like a club sandwich, but it was no club sandwich. A classic club sandwich generally includes thin toasted bread cut into triangles but the Space Club’s bread was actually a bulky white roll.

And, the sandwich may have been “oven baked”, but that only made it a bit crispy around the edges. The menu mentioned both ham and turkey, but I only detected ham (and no bacon, either). It was like a ham & cheese sandwich on a crispy white roll.

So, the sandwich was a bit of a disappointment, but the beer was still enticing. And, after the Schneider Aventinus, I had an Arrogant Bastard Ale. This “only” had 7.2% alcohol, but it’s in RateBeer’s 97.8 percentile. The label describes the brewer’s philiosophy well:

This is an aggressive beer. You probably won’t like it. It is quite doubtful that you have the taste or sophistication to appreciate an ale of this quality and depth.

One reviewer described it as a “hops bomb” and that’s about right — this beer was chocked-full of hoppy flavor and probably not particularly suitable as a sipping-on-the-beach beer ;).

No subtle use of hops to be found here. Very sharp hoppy aroma (grapefruit/pine), with some raisins. The flavour is pretty full on, hops everywhere, quite bitter and very sharp and a bit sickly, particularly as you work your way through it, the amount of hops throws the balance out a bit. Pretty much everything i was expecting, a massive hop bomb. Did i mention it was hoppy?

I had finished my sandwich by this point, and my intake of the Arrogant Bastard was self-governing. The beer was tasty, but my palette could only take so much at a time. Really, the Arrogant Bastard would have worked better along with food (perhaps a hamburger or… hawaiian pizza?).

I had a good time at The Flying Saucer, and I’d go again. If nothing else, this is one bar where I could order different beers every time — for nearly eternity ;).

Sandwich pockets?

Ashley Bischoff1 Comment

With my job in Fort Worth, I have to be there at 8:30am. So, with an hour commute, I have to leave at 7:30am. That’s a bit of a bummer in itself, but I have a conundrum about breakfast in particular.

With other jobs with a lesser commute, I could eat breakfast at 9:00 or 9:30. And, that would mean that my next meal (lunch) would only be about 3 hours away. However, if I eat breakfast at 7:30am (just before I leave), that means that my next meal is up to 5 hours away :(. So, I end up ravenously hungry by the time lunch rolls around.

Sure, I could just eat lunch earlier, but that would only increase the time between lunch and dinner (and I would end up ravenously hungry before dinner instead). So, I was thinking that I could make some type of “portable sandwich” so that I could eat it during my commute. That way, I could eat breakfast at least marginally later.

However, I don’t want just a regular sandwich, as I wouldn’t want any tuna or mayo to fall out and mess up my work-clothes. So, I was thinking that some kind of pouch would be convenient. I could use a Ziploc sandwich-baggie, but that would only mean extra trash that I would have to remember to take out of my car. Pita bread came to mind as well, as that would allow me to “eat the container&rdquo. But, I didn’t see any pita bread at Super Target when I went to look for some yesterday — perhaps another store might have some?

In the mean time, I’ve been trying to create a pouch out of a rolled tortilla. I have a stack of tortillas from Sam’s Club that are about 8" in diameter each. So, I take a tortilla and roll it into somewhat of a cone-shape and then fold over the pointy-end of the cone to crimp it. And, it kinda works. However, maybe it’s just the particular tortillas that I have but the tortilla keeps tearing along the crease-lines of the crimp :-/. So, to counteract a tortilla-rupture, I end up wrapping the tortilla-cone in a paper towel — which somewhat defeats the purpose of the tortilla since I still have to remember to throw away the paper towel…

Tuna Sandwiches

Ashley Bischoff4 Comments

I have a tuna sandwich for breakfast and lunch every day. And, each day I use a 12 oz can, which is the equivalent of two “normal size” 6 oz cans of tuna. So, that gives me 32g protein per sandwich.

In the past, I used to add sliced tomato and sometimes even avocado to the sandwiches as well, but I’ve stopped doing that for now. So, my sandwich creation is fairly simple: tuna + low-fat mayo + rye bread.

Just yesterday, Julie offered a suggestion that she had read in a magazine. According to the magazine, by mixing tuna with mayo, the saturated fat of the mayo tends to counteract the good effects of the omega-3 fats in the tuna. As a substitute, the article recommended trying a mustard-based vinaigrette instead.

Why they recommend a mustard-based vinaigrette, I have no idea. Maybe the authors just happen to like mustard-based vinaigrettes and wanted to pass along the suggestion. At any rate, the important part is that the dressing contains monounsaturated fats (such as olive or canola oils). So, in that sense, I suppose that any dressing would be just as good (assuming that it also had no saturated fat).

As I mentioned, I use low-fat mayo and, of its 2g fat per serving, only 0.5g of that is saturated fat. So, in my case, I’m not sure how large the benefit would be. However, there’s a chance that using a vinaigrette may be even more tasty than mayo anyway. So, next time I go out for groceries, I may just pick some up.

Come to think of it, I have some Wish-Bone “Just 2 Good” Blue Cheese dressing in fridge (with just 2g fat per serving, as the name implies). And, sure enough, it has no saturated fat per serving. Mmm — tuna sandwich combined with the power of blue cheese…

European Elvis

Ashley Bischoff1 Comment

I was talking with my brother the other day about peanut butter and banana sandwiches. And, after reading about them, he had the urge to have one again.

Specifically, my brother had a craving for what’s apparently known as a “Velvet Elvis”, which is a peanut-butter-and-banana sandwich, except that it’s grilled as if like a grilled-cheese sandwich (with each slice buttered on the outside).

So, he set out to buy the necessary ingredients. And, normally, this wouldn’t be a problem, except that he’s interning in Germany for the summer. So, while the bread and bananas were easy enough to find, he just couldn’t find any peanut-butter at his local grocery store.

However, like any good European food-store, his local store had plenty of Nutella. Now, in case you’ve been living under a rock, Nutella is a chocolate-flavored spread made with hazelnuts. It’s very much delicious, but can hard to find in this country (at least at reasonable prices). So, at any rate, he picked up some Nutella as a substitute for the peanut butter.

He assembled and grilled the sandwich: bread + bananas + Nutella. He tells me that, though it was definitely tasty, it still didn’t live up to the full potential of a genuine Velvet Elvis. Nonetheless, he named this new sandwich as a “European Elvis” (a good name, I think). And, though I'm still a big fan of ordinary peanut butter and banana sandwiches, I look forward to consuming a European Elvis sometime.

ObJulie: Yes, I'm aware that Central Market probably has Nutella for sale ;).