This week the Bear Market embarks on a great adventure: the sandwich. Last weekend we bought a stack of frozen grocery store panini and flatbread and stockpiled them in the RFT freezer. Barring theft, we will try out a new one every day this week.

We had to go back to the supermarket this morning to get a new Oscar Mayer Deli Creations Flatbread Sandwich so we could find out what it tasted like untainted. We stood in the packaged lunchmeat aisle and stared at the array of sandwiches before us. The pictures on the boxes, of sub sandwiches, of flatbread, of turkey, of chicken, of ham, of gooey gobs of processed cheddar cheese, made our stomach turn.

The strains of "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" over the loudspeaker made us nostalgic, not for Christmases past or even the Judy Garland or Frank Sinatra renditions, but for the ur-sandwich, the greatest cheap sandwich we had ever eaten.

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This week the Bear Market embarks on a great adventure: the sandwich. Last weekend we bought a stack of frozen grocery store panini and flatbread and stockpiled them in the RFT freezer. Barring theft, we will try out a new one every day this week.

It is foods like Hot Pockets that give frozen sandwiches a bad name. To give the inventors of Hot Pockets the benefit of the doubt, there is an ancient tradition of baking meat in pastry crusts. Meat pies seem kind of charming to us now -- they do, after all, combine two of our favorite things -- but maybe there is a reason they were replaced by apples and chocolate and cream. Maybe they sucked as much as Hot Pockets do.

Hot Pockets have, inexplicably, run rampant over a broad range of cuisines and successfully subjugated and ruined sub sandwiches, croissants, tortillas, calzones and (the ultimate indignity) breakfast. We tried eating them when they first came out, when we were in college and subsisting on Kraft Macaroni & Cheese. We failed miserably.

So it was with some trepidation that we approached the freezer this afternoon. The pitying glances bestowed upon us by our co-workers as we pulled out the Hot Pockets Panini box didn't really help.

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This week the Bear Market embarks on a great adventure: the sandwich. Last weekend we bought a stack of frozen grocery store panini and flatbread and stockpiled them in the RFT freezer. Barring theft, we will try out a new one every day this week.

A colleague was concerned about our new frozen panini-eating regimen.

"How many preservatives were in that sandwich?" she asked us Monday afternoon after we sang the praises of the Stouffer's Corner Bistro panini.

We checked the packaging. Some of the ingredients seemed familiar, like chicken and cheese, but indeed there were a lot that appeared to be chemicals. We would not be able to whip up anything that tasted like the Southwest-Style Chicken Panini on our own.

"Um... a lot," we confessed. "But it was only two dollars at Schnucks!"

"I think I'm going to pick up some sandwiches at Dierberg's," our colleague said primly.

She was referring to the Alexia panini, said to be all natural and developed by a gourmet chef. After our beefy misadventure yesterday, those sounded like magic words.

Is this the magic frozen panini? Find out after the jump.
 
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This week the Bear Market embarks on a great adventure: the sandwich. Last weekend we bought a stack of frozen grocery store panini and flatbread and stockpiled them in the RFT freezer. Barring theft, we will try out a new one every day this week.

The Bear Market is an economist, sort of, and though we can't do anything fancy like explain, precisely, why the economy failed or when and how it will recover, we can offer a few bits of valuable wisdom: There is no such thing as a free lunch.

Today's sandwich is a perfect example of that principle. Last Friday, the day we intended to eat our Oscar Meyer Deli Creations Flatbread Sandwich, our business manager very generously provided a dozen pizzas for the staff's delectation. Who are we to say no to free Racanelli's?

Therefore, our sandwich sat in the refrigerator for three additional days. This afternoon, as we tore open the little plastic pouch that held the meat, we noticed that it smelled the slightest bit...gamy. We finished assembling the sandwich per the instructions on the package and popped it into the microwave, and then it occurred to us to check if there was an expiration date.

Sure enough, there it was: December 6. Today is December 9.
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This week the Bear Market embarks on a great adventure: the sandwich. Last weekend we bought a stack of frozen grocery store panini and flatbread and stockpiled them in the RFT freezer. Barring theft, we will try out a new one every day this week.

Our earliest memory of the workplace lunch was the sandwiches our mother packed us every morning for day camp and later school. (And, believe us, feigning enthusiasm for volleyball and bug juice was work.) At first, she would borrow our crayons and draw little pictures on our brown paper bag, but after eight weeks of camp, the thrill was gone. The drawings ceased and all that was left were a series of salami or peanut-butter sandwiches in various states of flatness, pressed into submission by our juice box.

Sometimes we buy a loaf of bread and some turkey or chicken and try to convince ourself that those lunches weren't so bad, but even though we get to eat them now at our comfortable desk instead of an ant-infested patch of lawn or a sticky cafeteria table crammed in with twenty of our peers, the taste still makes us a bit sad. Not nostalgic. Just sad.

There are a couple of sandwich shops in the vicinity of our office, one famed for its amazing weight-loss properties, the other for its astonishingly speedy delivery. A lunch from either can cost upwards of six bucks at an unfavorable ratio of cost to taste.

Is it possible to do better with frozen supermarket fare? Find out after the jump.

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We could pretend that going to the supermarket is a new kind of adventure now that times are tight. Shopping trips become infinitely more exciting when you add the element of mental calculation. It's almost like going on The Price is Right, except without Bob Barker. How much food can you get for 20 bucks and can you improve over last week's shopping trip? Can you keep track of which items are cheaper at Schnucks and which are a better deal at Target? Is the superior taste of the name-brand over the generic worth the 50 extra cents? Is anything really worth a trip to Whole Foods? And would it be just better to bag the whole cooking thing and eat out?

Gut Check is always pleased to come across a good, cheap meal and especially pleased to let our readers know about it. There is no reason to resort to vintage Depression cuisine unless, of course, you really, sincerely dig split pea soup. And so we proudly present The Bear Market.

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