National Dairy Month Calls for Quality Dairy

If you’ve been around for a while, you know that I believe wholeheartedly in quality dairy products in the diet. If you’ve been reading more closely, you may also be aware that I believe grass-fed dairy (butter, especially) is healthier than our typical supermarket butter. So when Finlandia offered to send me some of their butter and cheese to try out for National Dairy Month, I was eager to take them up on it!

Food should provide the nutritional building blocks our bodies need in order to be healthy and strong! Unfortunately, the modern supermarket can be a field of nutritional land mines. Butter may contain chemicals from GMO grains fed to the dairy cows, growth hormones, and even dyes, and be lacking in many of the nutrients that make butter such a nutritionally-dense food in the first place! (Did you know that grass-fed butter — especially during the sunny summer months — is naturally yellow? Mass-produced butters from grain-fed cows often contain little natural vitamin A, so they’re dyed to make them look like the “real” butter.)

Finlandia has been producing dairy products for more than a century and, like much of Europe, is smart enough to stick more closely to the traditional methods — particularly when it comes to what’s going into the milk. Or, more properly, what isn’t. This butter and cheese is free of recombinant bovine growth hormone, free of GMO’s, and full of all the delicious goodness of butter from cows that primarily feed on grass. I used the butter and Swiss cheese they sent me to make my favorite sandwich — a turkey melt. Unfortunately, I can no longer eat a turkey melt, due to having to be gluten-free, but my children will testify to its yumminess. (Click here to find out where to get Finlandia products near you.)

How to Make a Turkey Melt

Turkey Melt

Rachel Ramey

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Course Lunch

Ingredients

2 slices bread preferably whole-grain
2 slices Swiss cheese
1 slice cooked turkey/turkey lunch meat or more, as desired
butter

Instructions

Layer the bread, cheese, and turkey, as follows: bread, cheese, turkey, cheese, bread.
Butter the top slice of bread.
Melt additional butter in a skillet over low heat.
Place the sandwich in the skillet, buttered side up.
Cook until the cheese is melted and the bottom of the sandwich is browned. (If necessary, cover with a lid to facilitate the melting of the cheese.)
Flip the sandwich and allow to brown on the second side.
Remove from the skillet and enjoy!

First, a couple notes on ingredients. Homemade bread is healthier. We didn’t have any. This is real life, y’all. Butter may be salted or unsalted; it just depends on your preference. As far as turkey goes, how many slices you use is also up to you. If my lunch meat is very thinly sliced, I usually use two or three. The downside is the melted cheese may not “stick” it quite as well, so the sandwich is a little more inclined to slide apart, turkey on turkey. This turkey was pretty thick, so I just used one.

I love that this sandwich is as easy to make as grilled cheese, but even tastier! You’ll need:

First, assemble your sandwich. Like so:

(I meant to number that photo, but I forgot. “Read” it left-to-right and top-to-bottom.)

Then butter the top. This step is optional, but I prefer it. You can just use the butter that’s in the pan and call that “enough,” but I find the second side of the sandwich ends up a little dry and overly-crispy that way, for my taste. This way it gets just as buttery and greasy (in a good way) as the first side.

Place a skillet over low heat, and melt some more butter in the skillet. When it’s ready, add your sandwich, buttered side up.

Now just wait. The cheese will get all melty and hold the bread and turkey together. And the underside will, of course, get brown. (You can put a lid on during this step if you want to help hold in the heat so the cheese will melt faster.) I accidentally let mine go a wee bit long.