Food and Travel – Special Blog Post  

Our travel blog takes you to the quaint coastal town of Mystic, CT, home of Sift Bake Shop, Extra Virgin Oil Store , Sticky Situations, The Spice and Tea Exchange, The Kitch, and many more! Sift Bake Shop, spearheaded by Adam Young, winner of America’s Best Baker on Food Network, is where you’ll find the most intricately assembled pastries and amazing breads. Extra Virgin Oil Store and Sticky Situations are located right next door to one another; each one supporting the other by pairing together like flavors of honey, oil, and vinegar. The Spice and Tea Exchange offers a wide variety of specialty spice mixes, flavored sugars, loose leaf tea, and complementing products. The Kitch has a great selection of unique kitchen gadgets and likes to bring in local, small business owners to demo their products.

On our most recent visit to the store (The Kitch), we were lucky enough to see a product demo by a local entrepreneur and sample many flavors of her habanero jams all while enjoying an interesting conversation about local, home-based businesses. This post features our original recipe using her family’s habanero raspberry jam*. After some thought, we decided it would be delicious as a complement to a roast beef sandwich. We put together the following ingredients of what we thought was the perfect combination of flavors. We started with 2 slices of multigrain bread, and piled in between is thinly cut roast beef, sliced tomatoes and avocados, a sliver of sharp cheddar, and a handful of microgreens from the Seattle Seed Company. To tie it all together we smeared both sides of the multigrain with the Habanero Raspberry Jam and it was sensational!

So next time you’re in town, be sure to check out all these wonderful shops! Even though this post features only one of the local products we discovered, check back soon for upcoming blog entries using items from Sift, The Spice and Tea Exchange, Extra Virgin, and Sticky Situation.

*The products in this post are not sponsored.

Ingredients: 

• 1 loaf multigrain bread, sliced thick (1″)
• 1 jar Habanero Raspberry Jam
• 1 lb. roast beef, sliced thin
• 6 slices cheddar cheese, sliced 1/4″ thick
• 1 tomato, sliced thin
• 1 avocado, sliced
• 1 cup microgreens (alfalfa, radish)

Method of Preparation 

1. Slice the bread into 12 (1″) slices (you may have leftovers depending on the size of the loaf)
2. Spread about 1 tablespoon of the jam onto each slice of bread. (You will have leftovers of the jam which you can use for more delicious recipes.)
3. Divide the remaining ingredients equally (roast beef, cheese, tomato, avocado and microgreens) and layer on top of the bread. (Makes 6 sandwiches)
4. Close the sandwich, slice in half (or not), and, as always, …

…Enjoy!!