Odd to even think about making a note of this, but there are certain things that delineate this “event” at home.

Making a Pastrami Reuben at home requires me to buy a loaf of Seeded Jewish Rye Bread. I like the flavor of the rye bread, but it is not a bread that I want to use for anything besides making a Reuben sandwich. I am planning on using the last few slices of this rye bread, toasted, and hit with a mound of egg salad. So tasty, and I am surprised at how well the egg salad stays on top of the toast, even when I have a high mound of it placed there.

I make the homemade Thousand Island Dressing to put on these sandwiches, and to mix with the sauerkraut as a side, but once done, I’m probably not going to make any more Thousand Island Dressing until the next round of Reubens.

And I’m probably not going to buy more sauerkraut until the next round also, although I do think this side of Kraut & TI Dressing would go well with a fried pork chop too.

And lastly, this time I used the Wegman’s White American Cheese instead of Swiss or Baby Swiss on my Reubens. If I had bought Swiss, it is something that I rarely use on any other sandwich, preferring the WAC flavor on various other things (Bill McMuffin, Hatfield Pre-Sliced Ham).

So, I guess my “Pastrami Reubens @ Home” might have similarities to special holidays, like Christmas or the 4th of July. They come, and because they are special, people go “out of their way” to make them special by buying things they might not buy the rest of the year, and preparing things they only do rarely, but enjoying the special event and thinking warmly upon it… and maybe even getting a little excited when they become aware of the next event, just before it arrives again.

I think there is a rush to begin & end this event by not wanting any of the Hillshire Farms Pastrami to go bad after I open the package, and this has happened in the past. So, when I make these sandwiches, I may pile on a little extra meat because I don’t want the bread to run out before the meat, or cheese.

Oh yeah, and why not have more Pastrami Reubens @ Home, or have them more often? Because they are fattening and they “throw off my Blood Sugar,” so they are special because they have to be filed under the category of “A Splurge,” or “Special Event.” Not something I can have every week, or even every month. Something like eating a large plate of spaghetti, or eating a whole half gallon of ice cream in a day, or two. A blip or spike on the Blood Sugar radar, but no more, by my choice. An event that satisfies my craving for that event, without becoming a habit that will kill me, or at least do me major harm.

The picture above is what I might consider, my “Perfect Pastrami Reuben” at home. But now, even this has to be “toned down a bit.” Instead of using two slices of rye bread, I only use one slice, cut in half, so the finished sandwich doesn’t look like the nicely, sliced in two, sandwich shown above. Still just as flavorful, but half the fat & calories. And, I don’t really miss the other half of a sandwich. I guess my age is helping me a bit here. When I was younger, I would have wanted that whole sandwich… maybe even needed it for the energy, but not now.

And that reminds me of how “falling off the wagon” with food can be so easy.

I really, really, really enjoyed the Cranberry Oatmeal Cookies from Aldi’s that I had for the first time, last Thanksgiving. I enjoyed them so much that when I returned home, a few days later I made a special trip to Aldi’s and bought a package of them. And “Yes,” they were just as good, each time that I bought them. They were so good that I included “one cookie a day” in my routine, and sometimes with a small glass of cold milk. Soft and sweet, just like I like my cookies.

But, after about my third package of these cookies, I noticed that my resting Blood Sugar Level was just a little higher “over time.” And, my weight was not trending down, not even slightly. Not necessarily going up, but just hanging… and at a level I wanted to eventually reduce. So, I forced myself to “not buy” another package of the Cranberry Oatmeal Cookies from Aldi’s when the last cookie was consumed. And it was a little like stopping a favorite drug, or stopping using white sugar. There was a slight tug on my will to stop.

But, after a few days, the tug went away, and I did note that my resting BGL and weight did start to trend in the favored direction, and if I looked at it seriously, those damned oatmeal cookies were doing me wrong;-)

I didn’t know when I started to write, that this article would morph into an insight on “willpower,” but it did. Making the Pastrami Reubens an “event” was a nod to “willpower” and decision making. Making choices. Wahl, in German, which can mean “to choose,” “a survey,” “to vote,” to make a choice. In this case, to make a choice of what and when to eat, thereby affecting my health in the long run, even when that run is near the end of my life, even if my life goes on another eleven years.

I’ve not always made good choices, or not consistently. At one point in my life, I was just a few pounds shy of weighing 300 pounds. Around the 295 lbs. range. How did I get there? And after losing about 60 pounds over a three months period, twice, and about nine years apart, why did I let my weight go back up? Part of the good decision making has gotten me in the 245 lbs. range now. That’s good for me.

Following my weight and Blood Sugar Levels on the MyFitnessPal website, almost daily, has definitely made the task easier for both tracking my results, and the FOOD section, for recording what I’ve eaten, and even what I plan to eat. *I don’t always adhere to the total daily calorie intake, but I’m pretty good about the sugar/carbohydrate levels, usually.

So, I think you should be able to see that my focus on food and what I eat, isn’t completely an obsession. Okay, maybe it is.

---

[NOTE 03/07/25]: Just happened to see this on the Web and thought if I could get it cheap enough, and it worked, this would be one of my presents for next Christmas. I ordered this package of 3 from Amazon for under $7 and it is supposed to arrive tomorrow. The first price I saw was about $14 for just one of these. It is supposed to work on boiled eggs and raw eggs.

The advertising video they showed made it look so easy. They put three hard boiled eggs in one of these, one at a time, and it only took a second or so before they opened it back up and dumped the whole boiled egg out. I guess you just reach in to pull the two empty shell halves out. *I do not have a trick for peeling eggs successfully. Sometimes they peel easily and at other times the boiled egg white begins to peel off with the shell. Frustrating.

[end NOTE]