A Breakfast Sandwich

My husband was a wonderful cook. He and three brothers all enjoyed cooking, and it was fun to see them together at family gatherings, talking about recipes, grills, cooking utensils, etc. DH's specialty was cooking on the grill (charcoal only, refused to even discuss a gas grill), but one of our favorite meals was breakfast. When we were dating, he would get to my house early on Saturday morning and cook our breakfast before we started on our day's activities. After we were married and he was still working, the Saturday morning ritual continued...bacon, eggs, grits, toast (or maybe biscuits...he even liked canned biscuits as well as those really good frozen ones), and jelly. He also liked bucket steak (that he bought at a wonderful little community grocery store where they still cut their own meat) with gravy and biscuits, and we'd occasionally have that meal for dinner.

After he retired, he would get up with me at 5:30 a.m. and cook my breakfast before I left for school. I am an adult-onset diabetic, so it was important that I have a good breakfast to keep my blood sugar balanced in case I didn't have a chance to eat a morning snack. He'd also usually have my dinner ready when I got home from school, and with enough leftovers for me to have lunch the next day (I haven't eaten a school lunch in about twenty years).

This week, I had a craving for DH's breakfast sandwich. That was my favorite from the beginning; I told him it was one of the reasons I married him. We had the sandwiches during my last Christmas break; he went into the hospital on January 21. The breakfast sandwich consists of two pieces of toast (spread lightly with mayonnaise, and it had to be HIS favorite brand), several slices of bacon, a slice of American cheese (Velveeta was always his favorite...I tried to steer him toward 2% cheese, but he said he could taste the difference), and an egg cooked over easy (we both ate our fried eggs over easy, probably another reason we had such a good marriage). This sandwich could not be eaten as a sandwich (because of the runny egg yolk), but had to be eaten with a knife and fork.

I had a breakfast sandwich this evening for dinner. It was made with white wheat bread (DH was white bread all the way), low fat mayonnaise, reduced fat cheese, and only my second egg of the week, but it was still a wonderful meal. I've had a long week of missing DH, but the sandwich brought back good memories instead of the awful ones that have been floating around in my brain for the last two weeks.