Lighter Egg Salad Sandwich

Hi, I'm Louisa Shafia, on eHow.com. Today, I'm going to show you how to make egg and olive sandwiches. This is one of my favorite treats. So, as with any great sandwich, this one starts out with great bread. So, I have this beautiful whole grain loaf. I'm just going to get a couple big slices here, and I'm going to drizzle this with a little bit of oil. Just a little bit, then this is going to go in the oven for about five to seven minutes. This egg salad has a lot of flavor, and it starts with the dressing. I'm going to mix a little bit of olive oil, some lemon juice to give it a bright, tangy flavor; about one wedge of lemon will do. I'm going to put in some Dijon mustard, which is one of my favorite vinaigrette ingredients; a little bit of salt, or a lot of salt, depending on your taste; a little bit of black pepper. And, I'm just going to whisk this around. This looks really nice and rich, and this is going to really brighten the flavors of the eggs and the other vegetables that are going in here. Okay next, I have some farm fresh eggs, and this is a really key part of this salad. You can see that these yolks are really yellow. That means they're full of nutrients, they have lots of omega-3s, they have lots of calcium, and that's because these chickens had access to their natural food, which is insects, worms, grass, and all those yummy things that chickens love to eat. But when they eat their natural diet, that means that the eggs that they produce are really, really good for you. So, they pass on all those nutrients to us, the eggs taste better, and they look a lot more vibrant. So, always want to start with farm fresh eggs when you're making this salad. And, if you have a masher to mash up these eggs, that's great. Or, you can put in some hard labor and really mash them up with a fork. And of course, it doesn't have to be perfect. It can look rustic, with some chunks of egg in there. That's just fine. Okay, so this looks pretty well mashed up. Now, I'm going to add some scallions. I just sliced these up. These give some color and a nice flavor, a little bit of onion flavor. It's kind of mild. I have some parsley that I minced. You could really add any fresh herb. You could use dill. You could use cilantro, thyme, oregano, whatever you like. Parsley is just a nice choice because it goes with everything. I have some nice oil-cured olives here. These have a very mild taste. They are not super tangy. They're not super briny. You can use whatever kind of olives you like. You could even use canned black olives if you want, but I happen to love these oil-cured ones, so that's what I'm using. And last, I'm going to put in this vinaigrette. This is where all the flavor comes from in this salad. I'm just going to pour that on. And just make sure you don't pour in too much liquid, or else your egg salad won't be nice and fluffy and dry, and you really want it to have a nice texture when it goes in between the bread slices. So this looks perfect. You can see it looks rich. It's got a lot of olive oil in here. It's got a lot of nice, bright colors from the herbs. And of course, you can see these beautiful yellow yolks in here. And this is really unlike an egg salad that you're going to get at the supermarket. It's not got a lot of fat in it. It doesn't have mayonnaise. It has no additives. It's all farm fresh ingredients, so it's really good for you. I'm going to go check on my toast. Okay, this toast looks beautiful, so now I'm going to assemble my sandwich. I'm going to start with this nice bread, and I always like a leafy green on my sandwich, so I'm going to put a little bit of arugula on here. You can use watercress, you can use lettuce, anything you like. I'm a big fan of the arugula, so I'm going to stick with this. Okay, and then I'm going to put a few generous scoops of this beautiful egg and olive salad on my toast. Now, it looks so good. I just, oh my gosh, I want to put a whole ton of it on here, but I'm going to control myself, 'cause you know what happens when you put too much salad on a sandwich. It all squishes out when you take a bite. And to finish, I'm just going to drizzle with a little bit of olive oil and season with a little bit more salt and pepper, just for extra flavor. And it looks beautiful like this, open-faced, so this is how I'm going to serve it. Here's my beautiful egg and olive sandwich. Take this wonderful lunch idea, make it your own with whatever you have in your kitchen. Thanks for joining me. I'm Louisa Shafia for eHow.com.