It cured my doldrums and maybe it will cure yours. Just before sleep one night, when I pondered how bored I was with all the commonplace sandwiches of my existence (tuna; cheese and lettuce; egg salad; peanut butter and jelly; meatloaf) the idea of combining cheddar, bacon, and apple floated into my imagination. Next day, I made it for lunch for Toby, Kate, and myself and found it as delicious as I hoped.

Mind you, there are many worse things than a boring sandwich, like not having any sandwich at all nor the wherewithal to make one though lots of times, I prefer soup for lunch, or reheated leftovers. Making a sandwich doesn’t always occur to me, partly because I don’t want to eat that much bread anyway. So, if I am going to eat a sandwich, I want it to be really worthwhile.

The other thing I think about is how to eat more fruits and vegetables, and since I like to eat seasonally, and since there are mighty few peppers or really tasty tomatoes out in the garden right now, or lettuce, spinach or other greens, I have to look to what is stored in the cellar. Apples, carrots, winter squash, beets, turnips, onions. I’m pretty dubious about cooked or raw root vegetables in a sandwich but maybe I ought to be more open minded. After all, I ate a very tasty hors d’oeuvre once consisting of sliced, cooked beet on a baguette round topped with feta cheese and chopped dill. Maybe a beet and feta sandwich assembled with horseradish-laced mayonnaise would be really delicious.

Some root vegetables won’t work in a sandwich unless grated whereupon the sandwich sheds bits all over your plate or lap. Sliced apples, though, stay put pretty well, and would be a good addition to any cheese sandwich with or without ham or bacon.

As far as cheese is concerned, Swiss, Gouda, smoked Gouda, provolone, blue cheese and all the choices of seasoned cheddars available with horseradish, dill, and garlic or sage, lend themselves to flavorful combinations with apples, with or without bacon.

Since there is no panini machine here, I used my waffle iron instead to toast my cheddar, bacon and apple sandwich. The heat was enough to melt the cheese and soften the apples, and turn the bread into a pleasantly crunchy treat, though the sandwich would’ve been just fine untoasted.

Maybe the non-recipe that follows will inspire your own creativity. I’d love to hear from anyone who has a favorite, perhaps quirky, favorite sandwich combination to share. As we climb the March hill, as old-timers used to say, a different sandwich might make the trip more interesting.