Thanksgiving in June.
I’m a holiday purist. I think Halloween should be celebrated in late October.
Thanksgiving on the fourth Thursday in November.
Christmas between Thanksgiving and December 25.
St. Patricks Day on March 17.
Valentine’s Day never (it’s a rubbish holiday, we all know it.)
It should come as no surprise then, that the concept of Christmas in July is stupid to me. Save the Santas and the sweaters for December, please. July is for fireworks and barbecues.
So when I looked at the list and saw that Delaware’s sandwich was “the Bobbie” — described as “it’s basically Thanksgiving on a roll, with turkey, cranberry sauce, stuffing, and mayonnaise,” — I was a little annoyed. This is a day-after-Thanksgiving sandwich. Not a middle-of-June sandwich. It felt wrong to take on the task of making this sandwich at the start of Summer, but we also weren’t going to skip this sandwich and come back to it in November.
I mean, we did that once already. It wasn’t the end of the world, but there’s a little OCD part of my brain that is highly annoyed by it. So, in order to not anger that portion of my brain any more than I have to, we’re keeping this train rolling along alphabetically. And that means, we basically made a mini-Thanksgiving meal in the middle of June all for the sake of a sandwich.
It turns out, it’s rather difficult finding turkey in California that’s in any form other than “ground” when it’s not November. I used to be able to buy Turkey breast tenderloins any time I wanted at the world’s best grocery store, H-E-B, when I lived in Texas. But I’m not in Texas.
So on Friday, I went to Whole Foods where, at the very end of the meat counter, they had a teensy little section with a single bone-in turkey breast. I bought that thing right up, lest another person had the insane notion to roast up a turkey this time of year and snag that meat boobie before I could.
On Saturday, I brined the bird using my tried and true brine recipe — which is actually Alton Brown’s tried and true brine recipe. But Alton isn’t around my house to take the credit for it at Thanksgiving, so I humbly accept the accolades as though I’m Julia Fucking Child.
On Sunday, we roasted the turkey and made some homemade stuffing bright and early. I have to say, our house smelled fantastic. There was the even briefest of brief moments where I was like, “Thanksgiving in June is nice!” but then I went outside where it was warm and not very holiday-like and I remembered that we were in the middle of a pandemic and there were no sports or holiday weekend movies or anything that felt even remotely holiday-festivities-adjacent and I immediately got over it.
At dinner time, Nate did the honors of piling up the sandwiches — turkey, stuffing, mayo and cranberry sauce all piled onto a french roll. We completed the Thanksgiving theme (in for a penny, in for a pound, I guess) and roasted up some Brussels Sprouts and fried up some french fries for the sides.
Despite the fact that this was the totally wrong time of year for it, it was actually a pretty delicious sandwich. I was very pleasantly surprised. I thought the one-two carb punch of stuffing in the french roll was going to be too much for me, but it actually worked really well. It was very flavorful, but not texturally diverse. No wasted crisp or crunch here.
If I’m being honest, I was going to be highly disappointed if it wasn’t good. I mean, a lot of work went into this sandwich. This is absolutely meant to be a leftovers sandwich. No one willingly goes into three days of prep to make a sandwich.
Except for us, I guess. Because we did just that.
And while I’m never going to go to the effort of making this sandwich from scratch ever again, I will certainly enjoy a Bobbie or two the weekend after Thanksgiving.
Or better yet, I’ll go find a Capriotti’s — the deli that invented the sandwich — and buy one there. I’m totally fine with it if someone else wants to do all the hard work.
This sandwich has certainly continued the upward trend of tastiness that has been gracing our plates in the last few weeks. But, in the great sandwich battle that’s unfolding in our brains (not to be confused with the actual Battle of Sandwich. Very different.), Nate and I both think that the Connecticut sandwich is still clearly in the top spot. This one is squarely in my third-place position and in Nate’s fourth.
So, while it wasn’t a winner-winner, it was still a very tasty turkey-based dinner.
