Hawaiian Sandwich

Every Memorial Day, Jeff and I like to visit the peony garden in Allerton Park, the place where we were supposed to have our rained-out wedding. The park is about 45 miles away in Monticello, a charming small town, and in late May the huge variety of peonies in this garden is dazzling and a visual feast for anyone who enjoys painting florals. Such as me. So I took over a hundred peony photos under semi-overcast skies, looking for future paintings. Here is a trio of peonies I liked, but the light was a little flat. Don't worry, though. I took plenty of photos I'll be able to use.

I'm going to say the peony garden is about 1/4 the size of a football field. But I don't know. Does that seem about right?

About half of the peonies had bloomed and wilted by the time we saw them this year, but there were still plenty left, and we could smell the garden long before we entered it. So that's one of our Jeff-Kelly traditions.

We had lunch at the Brown Bag deli, a local favorite on the square in Monticello. Overwhelmed by the number of choices, we decided we'd try one of their specials, the Hawaiian sandwich. That's my pizza of choice, so how bad could that be? We found a secluded table, dug in, and were blown away by the sandwich's perfect marriage of sweet and salty, rich and tangy. "I could eat this sandwich all day long," I said between mmphs.The nice thing about deli sandwiches is that they're usually pretty easy to re-create at home, and this was no exception.

Since this isn't much of a recipe, I'm not going to list ingredients, just instructions.

1. Cut a croissant in half.

2. Mix about a tablespoon of room temperature cream cheese (or microwave cold c.c. for a few seconds) with a small squirt of Dijon mustard in a tiny bowl. The Brown Bag was extremely liberal with its cream cheese, so feel free to double, triple, or quadruple those amounts based on your cholesterol numbers and your conscience.

3. Spread cream cheese and mustard on the bottom half of the croissant.

4. Stud the cream cheese with (canned or fresh, drained) pineapple. A couple of pineapple rings cut in half seem to promote even pineapple coverage.

5. Top with whatever amount of ham you think you're going to need. Our magic number: four thin slices. We've tried smoked and maple ham with this, and both of those are great.

6. Devour while moaning.