I’m going to start this post off with two words….Hospital Food. Call me crazy, but I love it! It’s not what it used to be, at least at my hospital. They use fresh, real, delicious food and you can order whatever you want on a menu! It’s amazing. I remember when I had my first daughter I couldn’t wait to get out of the hospital because the food was so disgusting. But now I could stay for a week, hold my baby and let them bring me yummy food. I have a lot of friends who have their babies at home, which you know, if that’s what you want to do great, but I am all about the food in the hospital, Oh and I’m also just freakishly nervous to have a baby at home, but that’s another subject for another day that I don’t need to get into. One of my absolute favorite sandwiches in the whole wide world I have only been able to find at the St. George Hospital. It’s a Turkey Cranberry Sandwich on whatever bread you choose. They also have candied pecans, red onions, lettuce and tomatoes on it, and I think even Avocado. It’s amazing! I have tried a couple other versions from different restaurants of a turkey cranberry sandwich, but honestly I have not found one that is better than the one that they serve at my hospital. Just thinking about it makes me want to have another baby. Haha!
Ok, all kidding aside, now for the good stuff! This Turkey Cranberry sandwich is as close as I could get it to the hospitals and I think it turned out pretty darn fantastic, If I do say so myself! I absolutely love this sandwich and have been meaning to recreate it for the last 8 years, why it has taken me this long to make it I will never understand. This sandwich is now going to be on our weekly lunch or dinner menu!
Turkey Cranberry Sandwich with Candied Bacon & Oroweat® Bread
- 8 ounces Cream Cheese
- ¾ cup Cranberry Sauce
- ½ cup Pecans
- 4 cooked Strips of Bacon
- 1/8 cup of Brown Sugar or Coconut Sugar
- 1 lb of Turkey
- 1/2 pound of Pepper Jack Cheese
- 1 sliced red onion (sautéed for 2 minutes)
- Lettuce
- Tomatos & Avocado Sliced – optional
- 1 loaf of Bread (We love Oroweat® Bread)
Mix the cream cheese and cranberry sauce together and leave in a bowl. Next chop up the strips of bacon. Place pecans and chopped bacon, a little oil and coconut sugar in a pan until the sugar melts and coats on to the pecans and bacon. Stir the whole time and make sure it does not burn. Layer the sandwiches with the cream cheese mixture on both sides of the bread and then the brown sugar pecans and bacon on top of that so that they would stick then the turkey, the cheese, a slice of lettuce and tomatoes, Avocado and red onion.
As a side-note, Oroweat® Whole Grains 100% Whole Wheat Bread is premium bread with a whopping 21g of whole grains per slice! Oroweat® Whole Grains 100% Whole Wheat sliced bread is 90 calories and has no high fructose corn syrup or artificial colors or flavoring. It is it’s own variety and can be found along with other Oroweat® bread in the Western U.S. We used the 12 Grain today, but my kids love the 100% whole wheat and we will for sure use that next time since I love that so much good stuff for you in it! If your kids don’t really like whole wheat bread try them out on Oroweat 100% because it tastes great and all of my kids love it!!
Back to the recipe…The sandwiches in the hospital are not usually hot, sometimes they bring them to you warm or toasted. But my husband and I thought it would be fun to make these kind of like paninis. We don’t have a panini maker so we decided to use our waffle iron. we just buttered the waffle iron and then placed the sandwich right on the iron and hold it down until it was lightly browned on the top.