Ham Muffinwiches

Between-Christmas-and-New-Year is the strangest week in the calendar. A week of no shape. The kids at home but bored. The refrigerator full of leftovers. The Christmas tree still up but already starting to dry. The truck waiting in the yard. The cookbook out for copy edit. The year ending without me doing anything in particular to end it. I cleaned out a closet Monday. I read an entire novel Tuesday (the Amber-recommended one: "Crossing to Safety" by Wallace Stegner, which made me feel seen in ways I did not expect). I cooked four dinners in five nights, all of them a version of leftover-recombination — ham sandwiches with Gayle's rolls, a pot of bean soup with the ham bone, a shepherd's pie made from the leftover scalloped potatoes and a pound of ground beef, and a turkey stir-fry made from turkey Amber bought on sale at Hy-Vee because she knows I cannot resist a post-Christmas markdown.

Tyler and Dave put up a shelf in the garage. It took two hours. It did not need to take two hours. But Tyler needed the two hours with Dave, and Dave knew it, and they spent two hours in the garage with the shelf and a socket set and not much talking and came out after with the kind of quiet mutual satisfaction that 14-year-old boys and their fathers sometimes have when the garage has been their classroom. I watched from the kitchen window. I did not say anything.

Amber went to a sleepover at a friend's house Tuesday — Madelyn Keeler, a quiet girl with a big laugh whom Amber has been close with since seventh grade. Amber does not do sleepovers often. This was her senior year version of one, and she came home Wednesday afternoon with a red nose from the cold and eyes that were the dry tired of talking until 4 a.m. She said, "We watched 'Before Sunrise.'" I said, "I don't know it." She said, "It's about two people who meet on a train in Vienna." I said, "And?" She said, "They just talk." I said, "That sounds like my kind of movie." She said, "You'd like it, Mom." She recommended it. I watched it Thursday night with Dave. We liked it. Our daughter has taste. I did not know where she got it. I suspect books.

New Year's Eve: we stayed in. The kids watched a movie. Dave and I went to bed at 10 after watching the New York ball drop at 10 (which is midnight for them, 10 for us, and which we call East Coast New Year's in our house to justify falling asleep before the Nebraska ball would drop). The dog woke us at midnight because someone on our block set off a firework. We got up to look out the window. The sky was empty. We went back to bed. 2022 started that way — quiet, fine, a dog awake, a woman in a bathrobe at a kitchen window, a husband asleep in the next room. This is a life. This is a real life.

The ham sandwiches I made that week with Gayle’s rolls were the kind of thing I didn’t think about—I just made them, the way you make things when the week has no shape and the refrigerator is full and nobody is asking for anything in particular. But there’s a version of that impulse that deserves a little more intention, and Ham Muffinwiches are it: the same comfort, the same leftover logic, tidied up just enough to feel like you meant it. After a week of quiet satisfactions—a shelf in the garage, a daughter home from a sleepover, a husband beside you at a kitchen window at midnight—this is the recipe that fits.

Prep Time: 10 min | Cook Time: 15 min | Total Time: 25 min | Servings: 4

Ingredients

4 English muffins, split and lightly toasted
3/4 lb cooked ham, thinly sliced
4 slices Swiss cheese
2 tablespoons Dijon mustard
2 tablespoons mayonnaise
1/4 cup dill pickle slices
1 tablespoon butter, softened

Instructions

Heat the oven. Preheat your oven to 375°F. Line a baking sheet with foil.
Prepare the sauce. In a small bowl, stir together the Dijon mustard and mayonnaise until combined. Spread evenly over the cut sides of each English muffin half.
Build the sandwiches. Lay the bottom halves of the muffins on the prepared baking sheet. Layer each with a portion of the sliced ham, a few pickle slices, and one slice of Swiss cheese.
Butter the tops. Lightly butter the cut side of each muffin top and set aside.
Bake. Place the open-faced bottoms in the oven and bake for 10–12 minutes, until the cheese is melted and beginning to bubble at the edges.
Assemble and serve. Press the muffin tops onto each sandwich and serve immediately, with extra pickles or mustard on the side if you like.

Nutrition (per serving)

Ham Muffinwiches — The Week Between, Made Edible