Because I had occasion to be with my Dad recently (he turned 80 and looks GREAT), I also had occasion to nudge him into eating one of 'his' sandwiches with me. This is something I remember from my childhood, like Mother's special instant Tea Mixture, which I recently reintroduced into the life of my friend MonKe. She'd forgotten about the existence of this ambrosia, but was instantly transported at one whiff of the stuff.
Aaaanyway, this story is about my Dad's special sandwich. No one I know has heard of it.
It's an open-faced grilled peanut butter pineapple and cheddar cheese sandwich, cooked on the Broiler setting in a Toaster Oven.
Flash back to nineteen seventy something, and my Dad, and a Toaster Oven. We have wheat bread in the house, because we are crunchy granola hippies. We have Colby cheese in the house because cheese is a good snack for small children. We have pineapple rings- well, I'm guessing Dad would've needed to purchase these especially for the sandwich. Maybe a dented can at the grocery, I dunno.
So here's my Dad, spreading all natural peanut butter on whole wheat bread, probably that he or Mother had baked themselves, (they had a bakery for a bit, which is itself a story), topping that with a pineapple ring and slicing cheese on top of it before putting it into the Toaster Oven to bake or grill or whatever. I think I watched him prepare these on several occasions spanning a couple of years, thinking the ingredient combination slightly revolting, before eventually asking whether it was good. "I like them. Do you want me to make one for you?" I think I demurred, worried about wasting food. He probably said something along the lines of finishing it if I didn't like it.
As I remember, I DID like it.
Not enough to ask for it, but I'd thereafter have one whenever he was making one.
I liked it enough that I REMEMBER it, remember liking it. Remember sharing them with my Dad.
I've never attempted make it for my own kids. I've described it, and they made faces, so I didn't. It was a Dad thing.
But jeeze, I don't get to hang with my Dad and have food often. So I hadn't had that sandwich in... well, as long as my offspring have been alive, and probably longer than that.
And it offended me to think of making one WITHOUT Daddy, so while I was with him in Minneapolis, (recovering from Covid, poor thing, so really not up to a Great Big Birthday Deal for his 80th), I said I wanted to have those sandwiches. I procured pineapple rings when Nance and I went round to shops picking up his cake and scallops and so on for his birthday dinner. The next day, we made sandwiches. Well, HE made sandwiches, as always, and I helped eat them.
I learned something new about the recipe that I hadn't known before.
He likes it made with AMERICAN cheese.
In our house when I was growing up, we had Colby cheese almost exclusively, until us kids were sophisticated enough to prefer cheddar. So I only ever had this sandwich topped with Colby cheese.
I did not hate it with American cheese, though I expected to.
Whole grain bread. All natural peanut butter. A pineapple ring. One slice of American cheese. He has a pop up type toaster now, and that obviously won't work for this sort of sandwich. Instead, he put them on a cookie sheet into the preheated oven for no more than five minutes, and probably less.
Man, it was good. I didn't think to take a picture.
I don't know if he buttered the bread before spreading peanut butter on, because I was arguing with the can opener while he was spreading stuff. I hope he eats more of them- there were several slices of pineapple in a plastic container when I left last Monday.
But here's the other thing I learned about this sandwich. He didn't invent it.
Dad recalls Grammy making these sandwiches when he was in high school. My guess is that it was possibly a '50s recipe created by a food manufacturer. Could I find this sandwich on the internet, though? It took several tries, over the course of several days.
According to Vintage Food Disaster from November of 2010, this sandwich was supposed to have been made with Velveeta cheese product. Described by the intrepid blogger, Adrienne in Wisconsin, as
"...a Hawaiian open faced sandwich that was born in the depths of hell,"
it was peanut butter on halves of hamburger bun, spread with peanut butter, crowned with pineapple rings, covered with a slice of Velveeta Cheese Food, and topped with half a maraschino cherry each.
AHA. This sounds like something my Grammy would have made to use up the rest of the hamburger buns before they got too stale. I don't know if she'd've kept maraschino cherries in her house on the regular. I remember them on her hams, but for Thanksgiving, and Thanksgiving was a Happening. Daddy never mentioned cherries, and I think would balk at them.
The Vintage Food Disasters blogger Adrienne says nothing of the time it took to bake or broil this sandwich, but here was her reaction:
"...although they certainly had the look of something indigestible, they turned out to be a complete let down. I was shocked to watch more than one guest willingly take multiple bites."
There's no date given, (though after the invention of Velveeta in 1930something) that particular ersatz Hawaiian Velveeta sandwich earned a mention in this history of Velveeta.
Grammy may have found the recipe in McCall's. The timeline puzzles me, though, since that McCall's page seems to be dated May 1962, and Daddy would've been 20, or nearly 20, in '62. At any rate, probably not in high school. Maybe college?
Timeline aside, should you doubt the edibility of such a creation, I refer you again to Adrienne's blog:
"My friend Laura described it in the most glowing terms, praising it for "juiciness" and making an argument for it as a passable snack."
It absolutely is a passable snack, or light lunch.
Hmm, I think I have pineapple rings in the kitchen right now.
Piko-Taro; Pen-Pineapple-Apple-Pen [ Buckwheat Boyz; It's Peanut Butter Jelly Time]
