Easy Meal Mondays! Sandwich Hacks

Hello again everyone!  So this week has been a difficult one for my pain, and so I have not had the time for this next week to meal plan and because of that we are probably going to have a lot of sandwiches for lunches.  I know you have all had those weeks where you end up eating something comforting and very easy to make.  Because I have been having high pain levels, I thought I would go over some different things we do to make our basic sandwiches a little better or at least different.

Lets start with hacks for the common peanut butter and jelly sandwich.  First of all, just changing up what you use for peanut butter to a creamy or crunchy version instead of what you would normally use, or changing to almond butter or another nut butter will make your sandwich a bit different.  Also, using a different jelly, jam, or preserve than you would normally use will make things less common.  I really like preserves.  Jason and I typically buy apricot or berry preserves that are all natural and made by a local farm here (Huber Family Foods) but are sold at Cub or Rainbow.  Here are a few other things we sometimes add to our peanut butter and jelly sandwiches:

• Add Berries: This works well with raspberries or blackberries and less well with blueberries and strawberries as they are more apt to slop out of the sandwich (but don’t discount them because they would be tasty).  
• Add Banana
• Add Granola: This adds a wonderful crunch to your pb&j.  You could have even more crunch using crunchy peanut butter with the granola.  
• Add Honey or Maple Syrup for a very sweet sandwich

Next lets talk about the common meat and cheese sandwich.  Again, changing what you normally use for meat or cheese is going to help give your meal more variety.  Here are the different things I have added to a plain meat and cheese sandwich:  (the first few things are pretty normal, but still are adding variety)

• Add Tomatoes
• Add Lettuce
• Add Mayo and/or Mustard: I like to add Olive Oil Mayo and Spicy Mustard
• Add Avocado slices or Guacamole
• Add Sprouts
• Add Hummus: One of my favorite sandwich combinations is whole wheat bread with red pepper hummus, provolone, sprouts, lettuce, and slices of avocado.  This combination is good even without meat.  

Anyway, I hope this is helpful.  What unconventional things do you like to add to your sandwiches?  Let me know if you make any of these and what you like about them.