A whole salad’s worth of veg, squooshed into a Six Flavored sammie.
Jump to RecipeA few of you know that last week I flew to Paris on an impromptu trip with my sweet infant son. Needless to say I survived – nay, THRIVED. And I have this Salad’s Worth Sando to thank. (At least in part.)
There are lots of things that are challenging about traveling with an infant; the extra *stuff* that seems to follow you everywhere (car seat, pack + play, diapers, toys, etc) but these are not necessarily the things that make travel with an infant SOLO challenging. The beauty of traveling with a tiny buddy is that they can ride on your lap, which means they go for free…but this also means that you might not get a free hand for a while (especially on a TransAtlantic flight.) Chances are that even if you do want to eat your meals and snacks that are brought to you at odd intervals in-flight, you won’t be able to enjoy or injest them because that tiny human on your lap is – that’s right – sitting right where the tiny tray table would go. And you know that even if the tray table wasn’t under their butt, they would want to pull and throw every component on the meal tray across the cabin.
I’m sure I’m romanticizing this experience for you all, but it really was an amazing one. Yes, with challenging bits (like not sleeping on those legs across the ocean, and yes, like not eating for far longer than I would have liked.) But there was also a lot of awe on little Leo’s face, every step of the way. There was a lot of sweet bonding, so many extra cuddles, and on our way to Paris, when they finally delivered the bassinet and installed it on the bulkhead for us, I happily had a moment to let this little guy play on his own while I dug this fantastic sammie -packed with a salad’s worth of gorgeous veggies – out of my bag.
Sometimes having a delicious, nutritious meal you can hold in the palm of your hand is ridiculously helpful, and for me this sando is that thing. It’s inspired by the absolutely unforgettable veggie sammie at Terra Firma Kitchen in Revelstoke B.C. – a sammie so good that I pulled off my gloves in a blizzard to photograph it – and as I was preparing for our European trip, I realized that I had all of the ingredients I needed to pull it off. Lucky-soon-to-be-pinned-to-my-the-airline-seat-me.
This sando is basically a composition of all the homemade “fresh condiments” that I keep on hand in our fridge most of the time; pickled beets, a great pesto, some favorite hummus, plus a few veggies – roasted and fresh. You could use each of them in a myriad of ways; the beets on bowls and in salads, the pesto as a sauce for some simple noods, the hummus as an addition to a bowl or with crackers as a late afternoon snack. The squash is typically something we have leftover from this or that dinner most nights, and the greens speak for themselves.
No, I absolutely did NOT. I took 10 minutes and made the pesto for dinner one night, and made enough to have for my sando. I roasted butternut squash another night (really, it roasted itself, I just took 5 minutes to slice it + shove it in the oven), and saved some to squish between the bread. And, I make a batch of beet pickles through the winter whenever the stock runs low (another critical kitchen task that takes all but 5 minutes as you’ll see by reading the recipe.) This jar would have been made sometime in January and they’re even better now than then. So all I needed to do here was take a peek in the fridge, pull out the goods, and slice some bread.
Larger than a recipe, this sando is a great example of ways that investing tiny amounts of time in making ingredients that boost your pantry, to make meals easier, better, more flavorful (in an Ayurvedic way and a fun way,) and more nourishing.
A few quick reminders, here. Something is “Ayurvedic,” if it’s supportive of our health and wellbeing. This can run the gamut of substances and experiences, but one of the most important factors in our health is our digestion, and this sando is highly supportive of that in a way that a sando filled with fake deli meats and raw veggies can’t touch. This sando has all Six Flavors woven in (sweet = bread beets + butternut / sour = lemon in the pesto + pickled beets / salty = salt / astringent = fresh greens / bitter = kale pesto / pungent = black pepper!) which means that it nutrifies + mineralizes our bodies on the deepest level, AND satisfies our hunger, all while protecting our digestion.
I love the tangy sweetness of this combo all smooshed together.
I love the way that this sando packs a punch of veggies in a hand-held form.
I love that this sando packs a punch of easier-to-digest, cooked + picked veggies in a hand-held form.
I love that my body doesn’t feel heavy or weighed down after having this sando for lunch (or dinner!)
And I love that you could swap in whatever you have on hand and still have an amazing sando. Don’t like pickled beets? Use carrots. Don’t have butternut squash? Use sweet potatoes. Any greens can make a pesto, and any bean blended up in the blender w/a little salt and pepper becomes (BING!) something *like* hummus.
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