Sage Tanguay: This is Recipe Roundup episode 67. Today’s recipe is the first of a series in exploring unusual food combinations. Here to tell us about his infamous combination is our very own general manager Scott Smith. 

Scott Smith: Whatever you call that particular age between say 5 and 10, I was a major fan of Spaghetti-O’s. Now my Spaghetti-O aficionados will know, they come in several different varieties. I was a big meatball fan at first, then kind of moved to the hot dogs – the hot dogs are what I still stick with to this day; Although, I have to admit, since the heart attack, I have not hit the Spaghetti-O’s as I used to before. Now, part of any good meal – in my opinion – is the end of the meal because you never want to leave anything in the bowl, on the plate. The juices, the sauce, whatever it is should be taken care of – you should not ever have a plate that has some gravy flowing around on it, or a little bit of tomato sauce here on the side. With Spaghetti-O’s in a bowl, I needed some type of tool to capture all of the sauce that wasn’t eaten as part of the meal with the spoon.

I’m not sure why this particular combination came up. I have a feeling it was because I was not a fan of peanut butter in my early days, although I have come to appreciate it now. But I settle on a Mayonnaise and Grape Jelly Sandwich to go with my Spaghetti-O’s.

Sage Tanguay: I know what you’re thinking. But if you are adventurous, it’s actually not too bad, in my opinion.

I wasn’t too-too concerned because here are some things I’m thinking about when breaking down this sandwich: First of all, butter and jam – entirely acceptable combination, that’s something that people eat all of the time. And another thing that I’ve experienced and I think it a little more common is cream cheese and some sort of jam or jelly.  When I thought about it, you know mayonnaise is really just right in between butter and cream cheese. It’s a fatty, white condiment. And I was pleasantly surprised to find that it was just absolutely delightful. Something about the tanginess of the mayonnaise just kicks the jelly – you know, grape jelly is pretty sweet, but there is a little bit of a fruity tartness – it really brings that out!

Scott had some specific tips for compiling the sandwich just right. 

Scott Smith: So you’ve got a couple slices of bread of your choice, you’ve got a knife and you’ve got the mayonnaise, and grape jelly of your choice. Now thinking about it you might want to use two different knives, one for each slice of bread. So of course on the mayo side, you get yourself a little bit of mayonnaise of the knife. Mayonnaise tends to spread very easily – I wouldn’t put it on too thickly at the very beginning, until you’ve gotten your palate to enjoy this culinary delight. So just basically cover that piece of bread.

Now, the grape jelly side is a little bit of a different story, because I have had issues my whole life with spreading grape jelly properly. The grape jelly tends to lump. It doesn’t spread out in a nice uniform coverage, so you may have to work a lot to get the correct and full coverage over that piece of bread. Make sure you’re doing on the correct sides of the piece of bread, because when you put them together, the edges should match all the way around – it should be a mirror image.  You never want to cross sides on your piece of bread because it could, you know, it could do something crazy like open up an interdimensional portal, or something like that. So you want to make sure that when you put the two pieces of bread together the edges always match. A lot of people cut their crusts off of sandwiches, I find that to be verboten (forbidden) and somewhat – what’s the word I’m looking for –  somewhat disrespectful to the bread. So you want to leave the crust on.

Sage Tanguay: And when it comes to preparing the Spaghetti-O’s – 

Scott Smith: There’s a very fine line between when the can is open to where you can get the stuff out, and then when you go a little bit too far and instead of opening, the can lid will invert itself down into the sauce of the Spaghetti-O’s – you don’t want to go quite that far, you want to start right at the point that the lid pops itself up.

Sage Tanguay: He also recommends that you cover the dish while it’s in the microwave to avoid spatter. 

Scott Smith: Any tomato sauce that’s on the side of your microwave is not going to be picked up when you wipe the bowl with your mayonnaise and jelly sandwich.

Sage Tanguay: This recipe can be found on Allegheny mountain radio .org. If you have your own unusual combination you’d like be to test out and share, email sage @amrmail.org.