I LOVE bread! I can easily stay without meat for days on end as long as I have bread in the house. Yeah, yeah, I know it is actually not good for you, but what will our days be without bread?

As much as I love bread though, I must admit that you cannot really get excited about a sandwich that only has some butter between the two slices. The moment you add a few tomato slices, grated cheese, fresh lettuce leaves and a spoon or two of mayonnaise between those slices, you have a delicious sandwich that can even be seen as a light meal.

The idea for this post (and the others that will follow) was born from my collection of sandwich fillings that I gathered over the years from friends and family members and also from magazines that I bought for many years.

As always, when one likes to experiment in the kitchen, a lot of original ideas have been changed to go with what was available in the cupboards and when the outcome was a particular tasty one, it was jotted down in my bread recipes book.

Unfortunately I cannot share all the fillings in one post, so I decided to make this a general introduction post about sandwich fillings, hence the "Part 1" in the title.

The speed and ease of making sandwiches by placing all kinds of fillings between two slices of bread to form tasty meals, are the reason why sandwiches are so popular in today’s modern world. Apart from being nourishing, sandwiches are also comfort food.

Some of the fondest memories from my childhood years center around sandwiches...

Like these:

• Brown bread and cheese dipped in sweet, milky tea
• Tomato and onion on “real” store-bought white bread
• My mother's freshly baked bread with peanut butter and pineapple jam (an absolute end of the month treat)
• Pork lard with salt and pepper in my grandmother's farm kitchen
• Cold left-over mutton slices with homemade mustard and homegrown lettuce
• Warm, sticky apricot jam sandwiches in my lunch box
• Dainty cucumber sandwiches on a visit to one of the “church ladies”

It was not the sandwiches itself but the “things” that were between the slices of bread that even today brings back all these memories.

Fillings are what make a sandwich a sandwich and that is exactly what I'm going to share with you - Quick and Easy but Tasty Fillings for Sandwich Lovers.

Cheese fillings, egg fillings, meat and fish fillings, vegetable and fruit fillings, savoury fillings and sweet fillings. Some plain, others with more unusual ingredients but there are bound to be one or more sandwich fillings that will suit everyone’s taste.

These fillings are also ideal for busy moms (and dads), for kids' lunch boxes, for those times when you have to take a platter to a meeting or even for more formal events like parties and weddings.

There are not really any set measurements for the filling ideas. I leave it to you to take an idea, add as little or as much of the ingredients as you want and make the sandwich filling your own.

Who knows, you may just come up with another sandwich filling idea that will become a firm favourite with your family.

Did You Know

The word "sandwich" was named after John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich, an eighteenth-century English aristocrat. Rumours have it that he loved to play cards, especially cribbage. In order not to interrupt his game, he would order his valet to just slap a piece of meat between two pieces of bread and bring it to him. In this way he could eat meat without getting his cards greasy. After some time his card buddies started ordering "the same as Sandwich" and a new word was born in the English language.

Source: Wikipedia

Image Sources:
Morguefile
Pixabay
Tomato Sandwich Flickr