TASTY DISH
Hungry? Check out this Food Dude creation.
I’m proud to introduce a new grillee to our roster. Sue Holloway reached out to me through The Food Dude Facebook page and asked me to do a feature on her son’s favourite gaming snack, aka “The BELTCH”.
Food Dude: First thing’s first… why BELTCH?
Sue Holloway: BELTCH stands for bacon, egg, lettuce, tomato, cheese, and ham. It’s got all the elements of a good breakfast but with the addition of some healthy fruit and veggies.
FD: The tomato and lettuce, got you. Are there any particular sauces?
SH: My son prefers a mix of mustard and mayo on one slice of toast and a smear of ricotta cheese on the other and so that’s what I’d like to include in the recipe. Wal would insist upon it too if he was here.
FD: Who is Wal?
SH: That’s my son’s name, short for
Waldegrave. I named him after his grandfather who was named after William Waldegrave, first Newfoundland governor. I was going to call the sandwich a Waldegrave first but my boy thought of a better name.
FD: Your son has the knack for names in the family I suppose; are you the one with the knack for cooking?
SH: I cooked in restaurants from Florida to Yellowknife for altogether around 19 years, so I dare say I am. They all like my food at home nowadays though. Husband and I are retired now but the work don’t stop. Especially with Wal’s teenage appetite.
FD: I’ve got a two-month-old boy myself. If his appetite now is an early indicator of one later on, I’ll know he inherited my constitution. This is a hefty and filling sandwich here, though. How did it come to mind?
SH: Wal was playing some Xbox game one night and he was playing live so he couldn’t come to the supper table.
FD: I can relate to this so much, please go on.
SH: Anyway, so he asks me if he can just warm up the breakfast he couldn’t eat that morning - for the same reason - into a sandwich for him to munch on between rounds of his game until it was over with. Now, me being an overprotective mom and a chef by trade, I couldn’t feed him leftovers, so I chucked out what he had in the fridge and made him a breakfast sandwich fresh. I was concerned he wasn’t getting vitamins so I put on some tomato and lettuce for him and, with the eggs and cheese, it was something I knew he would enjoy.
FD: This is part of the reason I love doing these interviews. You invented a new kind of sandwich out of love for your son and I think that’s awesome. After trying it myself, I gotta say it’s really good, although I substituted the romaine lettuce for iceberg out of necessity. I was glad I still had some ricotta stored away as well because it really makes all the difference when it comes to this sandwich.
SH: Yes, Wal is the last of the litter here now and the baby of the family so. Plus, he’s all I got left to practice my cooking on now, so he definitely gets spoiled sometimes. He’s very creative, though, I suppose, like all the young people are now when it comes to food, so he was the one who suggested to put ricotta on one side of the sandwich. If he’s not playing video games he is trying to get me to cook some new crazy idea. That’s why we love your column so much sometimes.