"The Mongaheela"

In much the same way that most people expect the sun to rise in the morning, I've always looked at meat in sandwiches as a pre-arranged certainty. Almost every sandwich I have ever had has followed the sandwich algorithm: Bread Bottom, Meat, Cheese, Veggies, Sauce/Condiment, Bread Top. If I was feeling particularly crazy, I would flip the sandwich upside down, putting the meat and cheese on the top portion -- But I almost never felt that uninhibited. Those days of simple-mindedness have officially gone the way of MySpace, the rotary phone, and unfortunately, Knut the Polar Bear.

Several months ago, my sister made the lifestyle decision to become a vegetarian. Good for her, but dreadful for myself, a lifelong meatatarian. When I would go home to visit, it was as if I was visiting a health food store, and I would always have a tough time finding something to eat. On one of these visits, my father made us homemade vegetarian subs, baked to crispy perfection in the oven. I enjoyed it so much that when planning out my sandwich exercise I made sure to include my own spin on a vegetarian sub. This week marks the invention of a sandwich I like to call "The Mongaheela" in honor of my sister, but more importantly this week marks my foray into vegetarianism (for a while, at least)

 My idea was centered around peppers -- I initially decided that I would go with hot peppers, fresh peppers, and roasted red peppers, but then I realized that I would be peppered out by Tuesday. I revised the sandwich in a way that I would be able to enjoy it throughout the entire week. I decided on sauteing mushrooms -- to act as the 'meat' in this sandwich. Texture-wise and taste-wise, mushrooms are a great veggie option for people who don't want to completely jump into the vegetarian pool, but would like to wade around in it for a while. On top of the mushrooms I put a heaping portion of fresh red peppers and hot banana peppers, to give it a bold taste. I placed these on an already somewhat toasted Wegman's Italian Sub Roll, tossed on some fresh mozzarella cheese, and then toasted it in the toaster oven for about 12 minutes so the cheese melts. After a short cool-down, I put some pesto onto it, and my meat-free creation was complete.

Although the pictures are professional looking to be sure, they fail to capture the effort that went into this sandwich. There are two issues that arose while constructing this sandwich at the workplace. A.) It takes kind of a while to make... Between the sandwich building and the sandwich cooking, this whole process took a solid 35 minutes, while the actual eating only took about 2-3 minutes. B.) Structurally the sandwich just doesn't work within the parameters of the sub roll. I'm sure that I could find a better roll for the job, but it just seems to be a sloppy sandwich in general.

Aesthetic issues aside, this sandwich was delicious. I feel good that I'm eating vegetarian (If only for this week), and it's just a really solid, well made sub. I think that in the future I probably won't be making this every week, but I will totally consider this a huge success, considering that with the vegetarian aspect, I took a pretty big risk with this sandwich. Final score: 9/10.