Sometimes the French get a bad rap. Even sometimes in our American minds, when the stereotype of skinny, stuck up wine-drinking cheese eaters conflicts with the vision of our core audience on Bullz-Eye.com, which is more chubby, loud, beer-swilling, bratwurst and Velveeta folks.

But let’s face it–the French make some damn good food, and we sometimes need to give them some love for it.

Such an instance reared its head in my world this past Saturday, as I was heading to the eye doctor. I’d never been to this doctor, and his offices are located in a strip mall here in Madison. Before I walked in, I noticed a French bakery next door, and it was hopping. So as I’m having flashing lights shone in my eyes, and puffs of air shot at my eyes, and having to read these tiny letters on a chart, and picking out glasses (by the way, when did the price of eyeglasses become akin to buying a television?)–all the while I’m thinking about that bakery and wondering what they might have. It didn’t help that my eye appointment was at noon and I was starving.

I went into the bakery and literally the women behind the counter all had thick French accents. This place was REAL. It’s called La Baguette, by the way. First I noticed some fruit tarts….something I don’t normally eat, but they looked amazing. Then I noticed these croissants…real ones, not the thin grocery store croissants. But next to those were something sort of round and croissant looking. I asked one of the ladies behind the counter what they were and she replied in her French accent, “chocolate croissant.” Are you kidding me? Count me in. I bought one of those, two plain croissants and a pear tart. Then I noticed the row of baguettes, and had to have one. It was warm and right out of the oven. Wow. I told the lady I would buy more if I stood there longer, and she said, “Please take your time!”

Needless to say, the baked goods from La Baguette were amazing. I managed to not eat all of it on the ride home, so my wife and I made a nice sandwich with the baguette, and we ate the chocolate croissant for dessert. The next morning we split the pear tart, and then while my wife ran out to an appointment, I made a fantastic breakfast sandwich using a croissant (see photo). I made some bacon, and cooked an overeasy egg and put those right on the croissant, and it was amazing. It helped that I had the perfect vehicle, but the bacon and egg came out perfectly, and that doesn’t always happen.

So hey, for right now anyway, I salute the French and their food. I also salute La Baguette, where I will return when I pick up my glasses next week.

I’m not sure what prompted me to call this sandwich “Spring Ahead Sandwich,” but I think it has something to do with the fact that it has a hard boiled egg on it–something that may often be associated with Easter or Passover. Anyway, I intended to make this a vegetarian sandwich, until I fed my son some slices of delicious-looking salami for lunch.

So that was that. I picked up some nice long sub rolls, and sliced one open. I piled it with lettuce, salami, sliced hard boiled egg (Trader Joe’s sells them pre-peeled in a bag), sliced kalamata olives, sliced sweet/hot peppers (again, thank you Trader Joe’s for this amazing new treat!). I sprinkled some olive oil, red wine vinegar, salt, pepper and dried oregano, and closed it up. And it tasted as good as it looked in this photo. Okay, so maybe I’m not the best food photog, but it still looks good for a Blackberry shot!

Anyway, give this one a shot or some variation of it. It was filling, but I did have to stop myself short of eating two of them. At least on that day I did.

One of the best things about bacon is the BLT–bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich. I’m not quite sure why it all goes together, but it does. You can come up with all kinds of variations, but to me, the simplest form of BLT is the best–bacon, iceberg lettuce, ripe tomato, and mayo on white bread or a white roll. Today I bought some white sandwich rolls and ate two of them, pictured above.

Here is how to do it. First, cook some bacon (yesterday we went over a few ways to do this). I chose to make two kinds–Oscar Mayer center cut bacon and a maple bacon I found today. I mixed the two on my sandwich and they came out amazing. After cooking the bacon (2-4 slices per sandwich), spread some mayo on the bread. Layer cooked bacon, tomato and lettuce, and that’s it! You can add a bit of salt and pepper if you like, or use rye or wheat bread, or even use a wrap, but the basic flavors are key.

Okay, on to come up with more bacon ideas!

Okay, it wasn’t exactly a lazy Saturday but I was at home writing this past Saturday around noon, and my wife called to say she was on her way home from running some errands with our 3-year old in tow. And that she was hungry. Now, we have both been watching what we eat more often than we’d like to be, but I had gone grocery shopping and shopped when I was hungry. That mean I bought lots of bad stuff….i.e. good stuff. So I asked her….”no restrictions on lunch?” She said, to my delight, “No restrictions.”

So I whipped up my own version of a a sandwich I had read about somewhere else. I took two perfect sub rolls and cut them in half. I sliced up some red pepper and some onion and fried them in olive oil for about 10 minutes on medium low so they would start to caramelize. I took some white American cheese and put slices down on the bottom half of the rolls. I slid the peppers and onions over and added about six thin slices of maple ham to the pan and fried them until brown but not so well-done that they were like bacon (not that there is anything wrong with bacon, but we wanted softer ham for this). I put the ham on top of the cheese on each bun.

Then I sprayed another nonstick pan with cooking spray and when it was hot, cracked four eggs into the pan. I flipped the eggs gently after the white started to set, and then removed from heat after about 30 more seconds.

Then I put some peppers and onions on each bun, and topped each with two eggs, still intact, and broke each yolk onto the sandwich. I think my wife’s words were, “This is f–king delicious.” Yeah, no rules, just good food. We were not hungover, but I believe this would be a monster sandwich to eat when hung over. Or just if you’re really, really hungry for lunch or even breakfast. Or late at night…or hey, anytime!

Note: We were so hungry that we forgot to take a photo, so the one above is a replacement until we make these kickass sandwiches again.

First of all, what I’m going to discuss here is going to sound somewhat hypocritical. And that’s because as of January 1, I’ve been trying to *mostly* eat clean–which means a very healthy diet that is low in sugar, refined carbs and fat. Kind of like South Beach or the new Weight Watchers but without sugar substitutes or counting, respectively. One of the things this diet entails is eating whole grains, including bread that is all natural with whole wheat or rye or other grains front and center. Trader Joe’s has excellent bread like this that has little or no preservatives either.

Anyway, let’s face it. If you grew up eating white bread like most of us baby boomers did, you sometimes just have to have white bread. In addition, our 3-year-old son is not keen on whole wheat bread and we like to make sure he eats some bread. I know this is the wrong message to send him at a young impressionable age, but still. Anyway, recently I went out in search of Wonder bread to buy our son for his sandwiches, and what I found were rows and rows of all whole wheat, fiber-added, whole grain white, or otherwise brownish-tinted white bread. Sorry, that ain’t white bread.

The one I wound up getting was Wonder “Smart White,” which is made with regular wheat flour and has wheat gluten and cottonseed fiber added to give it an obscene 5 grams of fiber per two slices. At this point, why wouldn’t you just go for the real thing? But I digress.

I wasn’t compelled to write about this until my wife brought home Thomas’ English muffins over the weekend. These, by the way, are also not available in classic white versions anymore. Oh, they’re white, but the ones she bought were called “Triple Health,” meaning they are 100 calories, high in fiber and low in sodium. Blech. These have farina and wheat gluten and oat cellulose added. Sounds yummy, doesn’t it? Well, I tried one of these yesterday and it toasted up unusually crispy with little flavor and almost no real substance. It was like eating a large, aerated cracker. Triple Health to me is not this English muffin. Blech.

I should add, however, that she also bought a loaf of Village Hearth Italian bread, and voila–this is real white bread as I remember it!

The moral of this story? If you have a hankering for real white bread and you have to spend an hour in the bread aisle trying to find what you need, just look for the I-word–Italian. My brother-in-law, who likens whole wheat bread to sawdust, and I, have this conversation regularly about white bread and why it just tastes good. Many whole wheat breads do as well, but sometimes white bread makes more sense to the sandwich you are making, or to your own nostalgic palate at any given time.

The last few days, I’ve been under the weather with a nasty cold, and when I am, I typically have a hard time sticking to a healthy eating plan (contrary to what I should be doing to get better!). So today I had a peanut butter sandwich with that Italian bread and it was awesome. And now, I can go back to my whole wheat ways for a while, until that white bread hankering hits me again. How about you?