Vegetable Soup with Grilled Cheese

I try to keep some soup in the freezer at all times. That way if I get home and feel unmotivated, I can just pop some soup on the stovetop and have dinner ready in 15 minutes flat. This is exactly what happened one night last week but instead of our usual bread pairing, I wanted to make a grilled cheese sandwich. I used to live on grilled cheese sandwiches in college. However, the ingredients consisted of 2 slices of white bread with 2 slices of American cheese from the deli. Very bare bones but I remember them being very good and I would crave them all throughout class.


As I get older, I am finding there are other cheeses in life besides white American and mozzarella. For example gruyere cheese is fantastic and melts wonderfully. So I grated some gruyere, carved four nice big slices from my Portuguese loaf, salt and peppered some tomato and chopped up some dill. Next lightly buttered my non stick pan and when it was good and hot, placed my sandwich in the pan. The cheese began to melt and I could smell the dill. I had to weight the sandwich down with a soup can and a ceramic baker. When the bottom was golden brown, I was ready to flip and replaced my weight. In 10 minutes I had a hot and crusty grilled cheese sandwich to go with my vegetable soup.