for the love of mayonnaise a blog about sandwiches.

I feel like I’ve been doing a lot of breakfast friendly sandwiches so I thought I’d mix it up. This one is a combination of one of my go-to dinner chicken dishes and a go-to appetizer. I like doing sandwiches that don’t require a lot of ingredients you might not already have in your house. Plus this one has a lot of flexibility because you can use your favorite recipe for each part or you can use mine.

It has almonds on it. Because if I were president almonds would be required on everything. True story.

If you have a spinach dip or a spinach artichoke dip that you like feel free to use that. If you don’t, I suggest using a warm dip instead of a cold dip but again it will be delicious either way. Use frozen spinach or fresh. I used fresh because I had a lot of it. Just boil it in salted water for a minute, then dump it in a glass bowl filled with ice water so it stops cooking. Squeeze it into a ball over the sink until all the liquid is drained out. Hold onto your liquid if you don’t want to lose all those nutrients and you are into things like making your own pasta. Add the juice to make fancy green fettuccine, or just drink it and your muscles will all pop out. In a good way. That’s what I tell my 2 year old.

I really love this spinach dip because you can make it in the microwave if you are in a hurry or really lazy. I like the option even if I plan on putting it in the oven. I found it on the interweb. It comes from Janie Obermier on allrecipes.com which is a pretty great site, if you didn’t know, simply because tons of people comment and tell you what changes they made and then you can use all the suggestions you want or none at all and make something that you may like even better than the original. For this one I only added some garlic powder per the suggestion of one commenter but other than that stuck to the original.

Spinach Dip
Ingredients:
1 8 oz. package Cream Cheese, softened
1/2 Cup Mayonnaise
1/4 Cup grated Parmesan Cheese
1 10 oz. package frozen chopped Spinach, thawed (or two bags of fresh baby spinach boiled, or a bunch and a half)
1 Cup shredded Mozzarella Cheese
Garlic Powder and Black Pepper to taste

Directions:
In a small mixing, bowl, beat the cream cheese, mayonnaise and Parmesan cheese until blended. Stir in spinach and mozzarella cheese. Add garlic powder to taste. Spoon into an ungreased microwave-safe 9-in. pie plate (or just any old microwaveable bowl like I did).

Microwave, uncovered, on high for 4-5 minutes or until bubbly, stirring twice.

If you want to put it in the oven, set it to 325 and cook until bubbly.

For the chicken, if I’m running short on ideas or time I almost always have boneless skinless chicken breasts in the freezer. So I defrost a couple and then sauté them with rosemary, thyme and garlic.

Rosemary and Thyme Chicken
Ingredients:
Olive Oil, to cook in, a few tablespoons
Chicken Breasts, however many you want to cook
Dried Rosemary
Ground Thyme
Salt and Pepper
Garlic minced, a couple cloves depending on how much you like

Directions:
Heat a skillet over medium heat. When pan is hot (a sprinkle of water should sizzle and evaporate) drizzle in a few tablespoons olive oil. Place chicken breast(s) in oil and sprinkle thyme and rosemary on top. Let cook for 7-8 minutes or until golden on one side.

Flip over and add garlic to the pan (I don’t add the garlic before otherwise it burns before the chicken is done cooking, if it looks like it is starting to get golden I take it out and place it on a plate and then put the chicken on top when it’s done, I have no idea if this is what you should do but it works for me). Sprinkle more herbs on this side and then I end up flipping it back over to this side once right before I remove it from the pan.

When chicken is cooked through remove from the pan and sprinkle your cooked little garlic bits on the top.

Spinach and Rosemary Chicken Sandwich
Ingredients:
Chicken Breast, cooked
Hot Spinach Dip
Tomato sliced
Italian Bread loaf, or other crusty bread
Almonds, slivered or sliced and toasted

Directions:
Toast your bread. If you want to add some garlic salt and butter halfway through the toasting, more power to you. On one side of toasted bread layer fresh tomato. Place hot chicken breast on top of this. Spoon hot spinach dip on top of chicken. Sprinkle with almonds.

Wait a few minutes if you can so you don’t burn your face. Enjoy!