Philly Cheese-steak Sans the Steak Part

The central idea behind me devoting a good amount of my blog towards sandwich creation is one of health. While it's true that it may be healthier to eat salads for lunch everyday, what would eventually end up happening would be that I would go out to lunch once, maybe twice a week to get away from eating something that's not filling or particularly exciting, rendering my salads-for-sandwiches swapout useless. I figure that, although my sandwiches may not be the healthiest things in the world, they are probably a good enough downgrade from some of the other much-worse alternatives out there that it more than makes up for it being less healthy than other sort-of-healthier alternatives (does that make any sense at all?).

So I figure the when I introduce vegetarian subs into the fold, that should mean not only am I being healthy by way of this post's initial paragraph, but I'm also being healthy because... Duh, vegetables! (You will realize that this sandwich ended up being not super healthy, but... duh, vegetables!)

The last vegetarian sub that I made last year was an unquestionable success. Hell, it may have even been the best sandwich that I've ever made. The vegetables that I chose for this sandwich are the same, but the makeup is wildly different. Whereas last year's veggie sub was done sort of in an italian style (pesto, mozzarella), I chose to take a decidedly American direction with this week's sub. I give you the Philly Cheese-steak inspired veggie sub (I haven't actually come up with a name for it).

I sauteed a mixture of regular white and baby portabello mushrooms on Sunday night in preparation for this sandwich all week, and in addition cut up some red onion and poblano peppers, throwing them all into a pre-toasted sub roll with melted ultra-sharp cheddar cheese... As always, these delicious and adequately priced items were all purchased at my local Wegmans. The combination of flavors was awesome. After a good 15 minutes in the toaster oven, this sub emerged with a crispy outer shell and a gooey melted cheesy center. It was incredible.

Every week I wait until either Wednesday or Thursday to take pictures. The reasoning behind this is because I commonly tweak the construction of the sandwich for either taste or structural reasons. This week I began slathering Dinosaur Bar-B-Que sauce on the sandwich both before and after heating, and in both instances the sandwich was just a mess. Delicious, but a mess nonetheless. After a few disaster trial runs, I decided that I should just cut my losses, and use the sauce (by the way, the absolute best BBQ sauce in the world, I mean this stuff is like crack) as a dip, instead of as a part of the sandwich.

Arbitrary scoring scale ranks this sandwich as a 10/10. Yes, a perfect score. This sandwich was a top 2-3 of all for me... What does it mean that 2 out of the top 3 are all vegetarian subs? I don't know, probably nothing.