ROOST: I fail at making creative lunches.

I'm swamped with work today, so I decided to buckle down and be productive.

Just kidding. I screwed around on Pinterest for three hours.

I can't help it -- that site is like a time warp. Before I even realize what's happening, an hour has passed and I have a pin board full of upcycled lighting fixtures and weird recipes like "S'mores Breakfast Burrito!" (If you're not familiar with the site, it's like a cross between a wish list, internet bookmarks, Facebook links, and those collages you used to make in middle school with magazine cutouts of NKOTB. Suffice to say your life is over the instant you get an invite. I highly recommend it.)

Anyway, I was stumped on what to make my kids for lunch so I decided to do a quick search for sandwiches. I was hoping for maybe a fancy grilled cheese recipe. Instead I got a bajillion pages of things like this:

I didn't make this sandwich.

How do you even realize that you know how to make a sandwich look like a robot? Clearly I need to step up my game in the sandwich department. And the lunch department in general. Here's what my boys ate for lunch today:





In fairness, they requested it. Quite loudly. Then again, I didn't tell them the alternative was robot sandwiches.

If that weren't bad enough, eventually they'll go off to school and I'll have to start competing with brown bag artists like this.

Here are some other awesome ones I found. I pinned them in case I ever develop artistic abilities with bread as my medium.




Roooaaaarrrr!!!








Okay, this is just kinda mean. My brain wants ice cream, my mouth gets bologna.

And this is a whole entire page of amazing sandwich cutouts.







I mean, really? I couldn't draw Mater this well with a pencil. -->

This puts my fancy grilled cheese to shame.

RECIPE: Biere Dip

There are few foods in the world I love more than French dip. Seriously. If you put Russian caviar next to a poorly-made French dip, I'd still pick the dip -- no question. So it was high priority for me to come up with a solid French dip recipe. And here it is.

• 1 1/2 pounds of chuck roast, cubed
• 12 oz of beer (I used Leinenkugel, but I bet an amber or a stout would be even better...)
• 1 can of beef broth (low-sodium for me)
• 1 package of onion soup mix (generic rocks)
• 1/2 cup of soy sauce (Kikkoman)
• 1 Tbsp minced garlic

Throw everything in the slow cooker on HIGH for 6 hours. Move the beef to a bowl and shred it with a fork; put the shredded beef on a roll.  Strain the little onion bits out of the broth, and make bowls of au jus for dipping. My hubby recommends a slice of cheese on the sandwich, but I can go either way. Tres delish, dude.