Money to Burn

I’ve mentioned my previous career that involved coin and currency processing. One of responsibilities of the department I managed was the official destruction of currency. Yup. You heard me right. We shredded currency each and every day.

My first day managing the department one of my support staff came up to me at the end of the day and said they needed my approval to sign off on the dollar value of currency that was destroyed that day. I went to sign it and stopped short. It was over $2 million. Wow. Over the years following that day, the amount was just another number, but that first day I thought “couldn’t they just have given me some of that!”

Some of the currency that we needed to destroy had come into us with some form of contamination. Currency, being a combination of paper and linen, holds on to some pretty nasty stuff. The most common contaminant was mold (think of people burying money in a can that leaks) but sometimes it was blood (on someone when they were shot or in an accident) or other bodily fluids (money found in a body cavity search at a prison).

For these pieces we couldn’t shred the bills as it would both contaminate the shredder and potentially release contaminants in the air. Those bills were destroyed at the crematorium. Once a quarter, a number of us would pile into a van with bags of contaminated currency and head to the crematorium. After all of the right checks were done, the bags were placed into the furnace (in place of a body) and the fires would light. Forty-five minutes later we would rake through the ashes to ensure there were no remnants of the bills and then head back to the office. Money to burn!

Grilled Chicken Wrap with Roasted Pepper Dressing

There is nothing to burn here as all you do is assemble and eat.

I had some left-over roasted red pepper dressing and decided to throw these together.

The dressing really makes this sandwich. Such flavor!

Delicious!

Grilled Chicken Wrap with Roasted Pepper Dressing

Serves 2

1 grilled chicken breast, sliced

2 large leaves of lettuce

1/2 tomato, sliced

roasted red pepper dressing

2 Flatout bread

Spread dressing on the flat-out and fill with chicken, lettuce and tomato. Roll and eat.