Grandma Katie's Birthday Lunch! 2014

Yesterday was Grandma Katie's big birthday, so we decided to make her lunch!  I've been on this big love affair with brie lately, so I thought I would do something with that.

What I did was, I stacked up some sliced turkey (yes ladies, all organic, farm raised, each one had a human child as a best friend, etc), baked brie, mushrooms browned in butter, kale, and jellied cranberry sauce, into a sandwich role.  It turned out alright, but I think next time I will either get bigger bread, or less turkey -- it was difficult to eat with all that meat stacked up in there.

I really didn't know what time we were going to eat exactly, and I didn't want everyone to have to wait around while I cooked everything, so I did as much as I could before hand:

To prepare the rolls, I cut them in half (for sandwiches), and put them under the broiler to brown them.  This is similar to putting them on the grill.

To prepare the mushrooms, I melted butter in a pan on med-high.  Then placed the slices in the butter, but not all smashed up together.  If you want to cook mushrooms properly, you shouldn't smash them all up together.  Give them space.  Anyway, just a couple minutes on each side and they are ready to take off the heat and calm down.

To prepare the turkey, I just cooked the slices (they were pre-sliced from the deli) in that butter, then stacked it up by folding them in half, alternating each slice, about 5 high.  Look at the pictures to see what I mean.  Basically, you can't have all the folds on the same side, or else it will all tip over.  Anyway once that was ready I set it aside.

To prepare the brie, and I mean brie you buy in a circle from the store, just third (I had three people to feed) the whole thing (like a peace sign), then cut those in half so they are only half-thick.  I put one of those pieces on each of the stacks of turkey.  Look at the pictures, but basically you just have to make sure there is enough brie for each sandwich.

Also, a couple of other things you can do to prepare is set out the kale you will need for each sandwich, and get the cranberry sauce ready to go.

So after all that is ready, and people are about ready to eat, you throw the stacks of turkey with brie on top into the oven to melt the brie all over the place.  I think I had the oven on 300 or so -- and then in the end I blasted them with the broiler.  I love using the broiler.  One of the sandwiches was no-meat, so it was just a roll bottom with the brie on it.  So while that was going I put some cranberry sauce on the roll bottoms.

Once all the brie was gooey and ready, I pulled it out and put the stacks on the roll bottoms that were ready waiting with cranberry sauce on it.  Then on the other half, I stacked up the kale and mushrooms.  And there you have it.  I served them with some new beet chips they have at Publix -- here are the pictures!