Thursday, January 9, 2014

Tweat Tweets Contest (revamped from 2011)


The prize is announced at the end of this post.

It’s possible that I am a reincarnated cryptographer from WWII. Possible, maybe even probable. How else to explain being the only one in my family who does crossword puzzles and other word games and whose favorite Christmas and wedding gifts were dictionaries?

Oh, I hear you! Jumping to conclusions again, are we? Huh! Being able to go beyond, to imagine, to try out alternatives, those characteristics defined the cryptographers who saved the world back then. I’m proud to claim that I (might) have been one of their company.

I think my past life explains, too, my fascination with tweeting recipes and cooking tips. I LOVE these little mini-puzzles. I bought Maureen Evans book of recipe tweets as much for the little word puzzles as the actual recipes I could make—It is unique among my cookbook collection. She was the first to tweet recipes, and now many of us do. Still, she reins as the “queen of tweats”.

Of course, the rules are, well, rules. Twitter will not (I know because I tried to circumvent their rules by re-writing the Twitter program code after I broke into their system one weekend) let you use more than 140 characters. That includes spacing and punctuation! OMG! Who chose 140??? Why not 125 or 150? It was probably somebody’s IQ or something like that.

Still, one can tweet recipes. I do very often @Good2Tweat. I’m going to let you try it, too.  I’ll tweet the best one left in comments here by midnight, MST, January 12th. Of course, I will give you credit! You can be a “tweat king/queen for a day”, too.

First, the recipe has to be written clearly enough that I could follow it. You can get creative with spacing (2 cups can be 2c). If you don’t have space enough for ending punctuation, capitalize the next word to signal ending punctuation without having to use it. Abbreviate common cooking and food words (e.g., “evoo” for “extra virgin olive oil”, “t” for “teaspoon”, “T” for “tablespoon”, and “mx” for “mix”, “H2O” for “water”, etc).

While I occasionally cut a recipe in two and tweet it in parts, I only do that for ones with a filling and base. This is not the case here. One tweet for this recipe.

The recipe you are to tweet is for the Food Holiday, National Hot Pastrami Sandwich Day, on January 14th.  My BFF, Pattycakes, makes the BEST Reuben sandwich, but she uses corned beef not pastrami. You can choose either one for your tweeted recipe entry.

Pattycake’s Reuben Sandwich
2 slices rye bread, seedless
1 slice Swiss cheese
6 thin slices pastrami (or corned beef)
3 tablespoons sauerkraut, well-drained
1-2 tablespoons sour cream
butter to spread on bread for grilling

On one slice of rye bread layer Swiss cheese slice, pastrami (or corned beef), and sauerkraut. Put sour cream on one side of second rye slice. Put sour cream side down on top of other ingredients and press together. Spread butter on both sides of the bread, grilled-cheese style, and grill the sandwich until brown on both sides.

If yours is the winning tweet recipe, I will gift you a copy of my new culinary mystery, Mission Impastable. Now that’s worth trying for, isn’t it? I reserve the right to include other submitted tweats that day, too, if they are several good ones!

Give it a go!

2 comments:

  1. I don't tweet, but here's a recipe. Cream Cheese Spread. 1 8-oz block cream cheese, room temp.; 2 Tbl mayo; 1 carrot, finely grated; 1/2 green and 1/2 red sweet peppers, finely diced; 3 Tbl finely chopped red onion; 1/2 cup chopped broccoli florets. Mix all together. Spread on celery, on toast, or on bagels.

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    1. Thanks, Cindy. This sounds delish. We like different sandwich spreads, too. DH is especially fond of cream cheese and horseradish spread on a flour tortilla and then rolled around thin roast beef, spinach, & cheese. A great backpacker's sandwich! But for this contest, sadly, I have to only use tweets of the recipe in my post. I'll look for your books! Always on the lookout for new recipes!

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