Today was the first of hopefully many Gourmet Grilled Cheese Day (GGCD) at the MHJA household, and though we had a few hiccups in the process, I think it was overall a big success!!
The idea for GGCD started when I found a recipe for a jalepeno popper grilled cheese sandwich on pinterest. How amazing does that sound, right!? But of course, Her doesn't like anything spicy. Issues like this have come up before. It's hard to have family dinners when we have OPPOSITE taste in EVERYTHING... I like spicy, she doesn't. She likes white sauce, hates red sauce, I am the opposite. She loves mushrooms...and they are the one food I can't stomach in any form. You get it, we hate each others' foods. As the primary chef in our house, it usually falls to me to come up with dinners we can both enjoy. This means we eat a LOT of the same meals... pot roast, spaghetti ( the one red sauce Her can stand,) PB&J, and Lean cuisines (we can each pick our own and still have the same thing!!
Anyway, I REALLY wanted to try this sandwich... everyone knows how much I love jalepenos!! I showed Her the recipe, and she thought it sounded amazing, only with this instead of that and that instead of this, etc. That's what gave us the idea to have create your own Gourmet Grilled Cheese Day.
Last week we went to the store and bought our ingredients. We got jalepenos, cream cheese, hamburger meat, two different shredded cheese mixes, and tortilla chips (to add some popper-like crunch). Then we tried to contain our excitement until today (Saturday.)
I started the festivities this morning by slicing and seeding my jalepenos. In order to get the texture right for the sandwich, you have to roast them in the oven so they won't be crunchy. I was very careful durning the seeding. When I was done I immediately put all of the utensils I used in the dishwasher and washed my hands. Of course, five minutes later when my contact decided to fold itself over in my eye, I didn't think twice before sticking my finger in there to fix it. Then I was on fire. That is hiccup #1
Hiccup #2 was also my fault. Earlier that week when I was doing meal prep for the week (that's when I take all the hamburger meat or chicken or veggies we are eating for the week and pre cook it and seperate it into bags or containers labeled with the day and meal it's for... yea, I'm awesome) I saved some hamburger meat uncooked for Her "cream cheese patty melt." Apparently I didn't anticipate any mishaps because I didn't save enough. At this part of the story I need to back up a little and tell you about how we decided to cook these awesome sandwiches.
Her parents got us a grill a couple of weeks ago, and we have been dying to use it ever since. This weekend is the first official weekend of fall, and it is the first sunny day we've seen since last Sunday, and we are obsessed with learning to cook without power in case of emergency so... we decided the best place to make girlled cheese sandwiches would be on the grill. Alright so, back to the hamburger meat.
Anyway, Her comes in all upset because the patty was too small. The second she put it on the grill all the fat melted off, split the patty in two, and half of it fell into the grill and was consumed by flames. So now she's got a couple of pieces of hamburger the size of macdonalds chicken nuggets, and way thinner. That is Hiccup #2. No problem, we crumbled the hamburger and put it in her sandwich... there was just enough. Problem solved. Until Hiccup #3...
In order to have the mose delicious Grilled Cheeses EVER, we loaded them up with tasty ingredients (they are SUPPOSED to be gourmet...) Including plenty of cream cheese. Apparently, ceam cheese makes bread soggy, which causes the bread to melt off and fall into the grill to join the first half of Her hamburger patty. So I cane up with the brilliant....Bread Patch... We just took new bread and "patched" them up.
After a few hiccups and sandwiches that look like they really put up a fight to get here... it was time to eat them. I have to admit, I was worried. I mean, we looked forward to this all week, and the one in the picture on pinterest was beautiful, and mine looked like Frankenstein (the monster, not the doctor.) I was feeling a little dissapointed until I took my first bite, and then....
IT WAS AMAZING!!
They were so good, we didn't even share. We couldn't tear ourselves away from them, they were so perfect!! It reminded me to never judge a book by it's cover, or a sandwich by it's number of "bread patches."
This was an awesome day for the whole family, even the boys loved it!! They had the best time chasing us in and out of the house, basking in the sun outside, snacking on acorns, defending our porch from the neighborhood kids on bikes, and of course, begging for tasty gourmet scraps!! Jack was even brave enough to come out from under his rocking chair to try a bite of my sandwich!!
I hope this can become a tradition in the MHJA household!!
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