The Other Me
‘OCD Toasties’
OCD can affect you in funny ways.
One way it affected me was when I’d make ham and cheese toasties, or cheese toasties, in the sandwich maker, and the cheese would spill out all over the place. It’s not so much an issue now because sandwich makers have a teflon surface and are easy to clean. But years ago, it took a bit of work to clean cheese from the plates. And it’s not neat. And it’s disorderly. And it doesn’t have to be.
So I found another way of making them which, now in retrospect, realise may have been the OCD at work …
| Start with whatever bread you use. Due to my dietary issues, I use Organic Spelt (obtained from Go Vita at Greensborough Plaza).
Importantly, flip every other slice before you butter the bread, so that each slice mirrors the other. In this case, look at the top two slices: the bulbous curl in the corner is on the left on the left slice, but on the right in the right slice. This means when you’ve buttered the bread and slap it together, all the edges meet. |
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| Butter your bread.
If anybody is curious, I use Nuttlex Lite. (Another choice made due to dietary issues. It tastes no different to your standard margarine.) |
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| Take your ham and lay it out. You may want to use several slices if it’s thin ham, (as was this ham I’d chosen). |  |
| Cut the ham into quarters. |  |
| Take your cheese.
This is going to be a little trickier … |
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| Slice a rectangular (horizontal) strip (about one/quarter of the main) off the top of the cheese. Cut a square off the end of this strip. Cut the square in half to get two triangles. Cut the strip to create these other triangles.
Then cut a recangular (vertical) strip off the right of the rest of the cheese. Cut the same triangles. You’ll have a square left of cheese which you can then cut in half (and, incidentally, the two biggest triangles). When you’re done, you’ll have all these triangles.
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| Stack the triangles like this, using the biggest as the base, and working your way up to the smallest. |  |
| Lay the bread down in the sandwich maker. |  |
| Lay one quarter of the ham in each half of the bread like this. |  |
| Add the cheese. |  |
| Add the other quarters of ham on top of the cheese. |  |
| Add the bread. (Note how neat all the edges line up.)
As you would’ve no doubt already guessed, cutting everything this way means that the foodstuffs don’t lay across the seams of the sandwich maker. When you close the sandwich maker, it seals bread on bread and creates pockets where the food’s contained (in particular, the melted cheese). |
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| And here they are nice and neat.
No spillage. |
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| Now ready to eat. |  |
Neat and perfect.