Sometimes, I’m better at coming up with ideas for the Secret Menu than I am at other times. This week, I struggled a bit.

I walked into Late Night Convo without a clear sense of what I wanted to make. Honestly, I had no idea. I’ve become addicted to oatmeal—the maple brown sugar packets available at the Grill Corner —so my predisposition was to find a way to include it in the dish.

And what do I do more than anything in the Secret Menu? I make a sandwich.

Why would a lazy secret menu not be a sandwich then?

Another thing I have become fond of at these late night meals is toasted cheese (I ask for half of a wheat sub toasted with provolone cheese at the Deli counter).

Combining these interests, I came up with the idea of a toasted oatmeal sandwich.

It actually took two attempts to make this Secret Menu happen. Elizabeth and I went to Late Night on Monday expecting to be able to finish the Secret Menu early.

Of course, camera troubles forced us to abort the mission. It wasn’t a total failure, though. I still made the sandwich, it just became a tester.

In the first iteration of the sandwich, I was given the idea from one of the chefs-on-duty to use cinnamon raisin bread instead of white bread, as I had planned.

That was a good decision.

He toasted the bread for me on the grill while I prepared the oatmeal.

The bread didn’t get very toasty, though. As a result, the open faced sandwiches were soggy.

Elizabeth also noted that it was missing something.

My initial solution was a streusel topping. Then, I realized that I couldn’t really make that in Convo, nor was I willing to go through that much work.

Better idea: a funnel cake fry topping, with powdered sugar for fanciness.

Preparation the second time was simple: toast the bread in the toaster, make the oatmeal by emptying the packets into a bowl and mixing it with hot water, then spooning the oatmeal on top of each slice of bread. Load a few funnel cake fries on top with powdered sugar and voila!

The second try was much better than the first. The toast was crunchier and held up under the wet oatmeal without breaking stride. The funnel cake fries also worked well with the sandwich, even functioning as a sort of pseudo-top-slice of bread to make the sandwiches easier to make.

While somewhat bland, these sandwiches made the perfect late-night comfort food. Just the right amount of deep-fried-ness and sugar, and not so much food that my stomach exploded.

They did get a bit messy when I accidentally ate all the funnel cake fries off the top of one before I was finished. Oatmeal-covered fingertips can be fixed easily with a napkin.

Overall, I’ll give the toasted oatmeal sandwich a B+. It was just what I was looking for in a simple Secret Menu item.