Cooking for One, Part Uno - The Easy Hot Roast Beef Sandwich

When my husband is not in town, I flounder. I forage for food. I do not feed myself properly. I eat graham crackers for dinner, followed by a dessert of one slice of cheese.

I do not want to make dirty dishes. I like it when I open the refrigerator and can basically pull something out and eat it right then, or microwave it for three minutes. That is as far as I'll go to feed myself, alone.

This is a real problem, as I am a person who likes a square meal. I had to find a way to feed myself without actually "cooking" every night.

Of course, you can always make a casserole and eat it every day for a week, and sometimes I do just that. But I get tired of it, and I don't want it after awhile, and it's a big old thing to store in the fridge, yadayadayada.

I am going to do a series (I hope) of posts on ways I have found to feed myself without resorting to frozen dinners, starting with the excellent plan I had yesterday. Cheap, easy, and felt like a meal.

It started when I saw some french/hoagie type rolls on sale. No, they weren't wheat, but they were cheap. We can't have it all. TBI and I both love a philly or a french dip, so I figured I'd try it at home. My plan was to use some left over roast beast to do this with, but the beast got eaten before my sandwiches came to life.

Yesterday, I realized my bread was about to go south. I had some deli roast beef (the commercial kind, not the butcher-please-slice-this-for-me kind, which would be better, but this stuff still worked), so I decided to make do.

Ingredients:
1/3 of a red (or white, or whatever you got) onion, sliced into large rounds
1 1/2 cup beef broth
2 tblsp soy sauce
1 tsp minced garlic (fresh if you got it, otherwise use the powder)
pepper (I like to crack it, but again, whatever you got)
3 tblsp worchestershire
1 container (they are those glad-ware containers) of roast beef - I have no idea how many ounces it is.
Hoagie
Several slices of swiss cheese
butter, if you're into that (I am) - otherwise, cooking oil/olive oil

Start by melting a couple of tablespoons of butter in a deep skillet, and toss in your onions, stirring a lot. You don't want them brown, but you want them to get a little carmely and translucent. Toss in the garlic as that show ends. Don't do it too early or it will burn.

Then pour in your liquids, and add the pepper. Let that simmer for a bit and cook down.

In the meantime, turn on your broiler.

When your liquid/onion mix begins to come to a small, slow boil (adjust temp to keep it there or just below), throw your lunch meat into the sauce to warm it and add flavor.

If you are me, you'll butter your bread liberally and toss it under the broiler for a minute to get a little brown. During this stage of the game.

When you think the meat has been in there long enough (maybe 5 minutes simmering?)pull out pieces and pile it on your toasted hoagie, followed by onions you pull out of the sauce, and top with swiss. Return the open faced sandwich to the broiler to melt the cheese, just for a minute. Pour some of the sauce into a ramekin or bowl to dip the sammy in while you devour it.

Eat it with some "lazy bitch salad" as my mom calls salad in a bag. The beauty is that you can pour all the leftover meat, onions, and au jus back into the gladware container your meat came in, and pull it out to do a repeat sandwich for several days - in a flash!

The whole process took me about 13 minutes to do, including chopping and melting butter.

I wish I had a picture of it to show you, because you would crawl through your computer screen for it. It's important to use good bread - the whole package is that much more appealing. And day old is totally fine since you're toasting it and then putting soggy-ish meat on it anyhoo.

Enjoy!