Masters Golf – A Fancy Day of Cheap Food

The Masters Menu – Simply Classic

The Masters Golf Tournament is famous for hosting the best of the best. It’s a four day event, and tickets average $115 a day, plus fees. Adding in the cost of travel and hotels, you’re looking at a pretty expensive weekend. With such an elite event, one might expect items on the Masters menu to be equally sophisticated.

Instead, the Masters is known for having an incredibly affordable menu. Every item is under $3 except beer at $4-5. The majority of the Masters menu is pretty standard faire, and at a glance seems pretty un-exceptional, but like most major events, there are a few must-have classics: the Egg Salad Sandwich and the Pimento Cheese Sandwich.

Breakfast of Champions

Normally we like to try to make everything from scratch, but golf is all about relaxing right? So, we kept ingredients and prep simple. We didn’t follow any particular recipe, we just recreated it based on photos we saw when researching. It’s as simple as it sounds: sausage, and a biscuit.

We bough bought biscuits from the bakery at our grocery store, and bought a package of pre-cut mixed fruit. We even kept our coffee simple and made our usual coffee at home. In hindsight, we wish we had made the biscuits from scratch because we like a challenge, but hey, it was a time saver, and the bakery biscuits were delicious, so we can’t really complain.

Sandwiches, Better Than a Sand Trap

Time for the main event, sandwiches. Like I mentioned before, the Masters Golf Tournament is famously known for both their classic Egg Salad Sandwich, and the Master’s Pimento Cheese Sandwich.

Let’s start with the egg salad sandwich, since it was pretty standard. The one unique thing we found was that the Masters Golf Egg Salad Sandwich recipe called for (what we thought) was a lot of mayonnaise. We were a little worried, but it was truthfully very tasty and we didn’t find the mayo to be overpowering.

We made one of each to share, and ended up doing the same thing for dinner.

Pimento Cheese Sandwich….Really?

Ok, now onto the pimento cheese sandwich. Now, I know what you’re probably thinking, because we thought it too..a pimento cheese sandwich? That’s a Masters Golf Tournament classic? Why?

A quick history lesson then! Firstly, the pimento cheese sandwich is a staple in southern states like Georgia, and was originally served to workers at textile mills. The sandwich was high in protein and was a quick and easy lunchtime solution. So how did it find a home at the Masters Golf Tournament? The story dates back to the 1940s when Hodges and Ola Herndon, a husband and wife, made simple sandwiches at their home and sold them to patrons at the tournament for 25 cents. The sandwiches were a hit, the price couldn’t be beat, and the facilitators of the event were thrilled patrons were happy. Tradition was born.

Ok, back to our kitchen. We were pretty excited to try this one, and wanted to keep it as simple as the tradition. We actually found a pre-packaged pimento cheese spread at the store, but that seemed too easy. Instead we made our own with a jar of diced pimentos and even lucked out finding a combo bag of shredded Monterey Jack and cheddar cheese. Add the mayo and spices and boom, pimento cheese sandwich!

We were a little skeptical at first based on the ingredients, but it was a delicious! It had a unique flavor with a hint of spice, and we ended up eating it for dinner too!

The Augusta National Azaela Cocktail

The landscape at the Augusta National Masters Golf Tournament is sea of green grass and azalea flowers. So fittingly, the Azaela is the drink of the day. It’s a refreshing simple drink of vodka, grenadine and lemonade.

This was the hardest challenge for us to recreate since we didn’t have all the exact ingredients. We love to be as accurate as possible, but the color of our drink was off since we didn’t have any pomegranate seed. Even though it wasn’t perfect, it was refreshing.

Just Peachy

Last up on our menu was the Masters Golf Tournament Georgia Peach Ice Cream Sandwich, aka, my favorite part of the day!

Now we’ve made our own ice cream before, but again, we kept it simple. We bought sugar cookies at the bakery, and found peach ice cream at the store. We first let the ice cream thaw a little before scooping it onto the cookie, wrapped it in cling wrap, and re-froze it until we were ready to eat.

It’s easy to see why this is a classic, the combination of flavors was perfect kickoff to spring.