Go Irish with Reuben Quesadillas

Oscar Wilde, Irish playwright, novelist, essayist, and poet 

Cook's notes: This week Healthy Friday dishes are being moved to Weekend Round-Up to make room for a St. Paddy sandwich that gives a twist to the traditional Reuben sandwich. It's so simple you might say "Now why didn't I think of that!" Flour tortillas are substituted for pumpernickel bread. I used whole wheat tortillas.

Cooking Tips: To prevent quesadillas from getting soggy make sure you press the sauerkraut dry on a paper towel. So the cheese melts and the corned beef gets heated through cover the quesadillas with a baking sheet on the griddle. Cook one side of quesadillas, uncover, flip sandwich over and recover with the baking sheet.     

Use a prepared lite Thousand Island Dressing. 

And yes one more thing- Don't forget the Guinness! Who needs dessert anyway. 

recipe makes 4 sandwiches and was adapted from cuisineathome April 2017.

Ingredients:

• 2 cups shredded Swiss cheese
• 8 oz. deli Corned beef, sliced thin
• 1 cup sauerkraut, drained
• 1 tsp. caraway seeds 
• 4 flour tortillas 
• 4 TB. lite Thousand Island Island Dressing

Directions:

• Heat griddle to 400 degrees and lightly grease.
• On one half of each tortilla arrange in the following order: 1/2 cup cheese, 1/4 cup sauerkraut, 2 oz. corned beef, 1/4 tsp. caraway seeds, and 1 TB. dressing.
• Fold in half and transfer to griddle. Cook until quesadillas  are golden on each side and cheese is melted about 5 minutes per side. 
• Slice into wedges. 

Love the imagery in a favorite Seamus Heaney poem

Digging

Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests; snug as a gun.

Under my window, a clean rasping sound
When the spade sinks into gravelly ground:
My father, digging. I look down

Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds
Bends low, comes up twenty years away
Stooping in rhythm through potato drills
Where he was digging.

The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft
Against the inside knee was levered firmly.
He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep
To scatter new potatoes that we picked,
Loving their cool hardness in our hands.

By God, the old man could handle a spade.
Just like his old man.

My grandfather cut more turf in a day
Than any other man on Toner’s bog.
Once I carried him milk in a bottle
Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened up
To drink it, then fell to right away
Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods
Over his shoulder, going down and down
For the good turf. Digging.

The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slap
Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge
Through living roots awaken in my head.
But I’ve no spade to follow men like them.

Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests.
I’ll dig with it.

Seamus Heaney, "Digging" from Death of a Naturalist. Copyright 1966 by Seamus Heaney. Reprinted with the permission of Farrar, Straus & Giroux, LLC.
Source: Death of a Naturalist (1966)

This photo was recently sent to Bella