Grilled cheese

“It has Brie, salami, and raspberry compote, and is on the jalapeño cheese bread from Goode Co. Is it still considered a grilled cheese?”

“I think so. Sounds and looks delicious.”

Over a year and a half ago, I was gifted the leftover entire loaf of jalapeño cheese bread from a Goode Co. Barbecue catered lunch. I brought it to my man’s house and told him I wanted to make us grilled cheese sandwiches with it – I just needed to go get the cheese first. He is excited about the idea, and keeps the loaf for me to come back and cook up the sandwiches in the next day or so.

The next day, however, while taking with him on the phone, I hear him wondering aloud about what something is… Why is there a twisty tie on the floor? What is this plas… And then it hits him. I ask him what it is, and he tells me with gravity that it was the twisty tie from the loaf of bread.

It takes a tick for it all to set in. At first, I thought he had been eating the bread and left open the bag. But then I remember his commenting on plastic on the floor…

Put simply, the dog was able to jump up and get the loaf off the counter, because my man put it too close to the edge. The dog is not very big, so the bread had to be very much right on the edge of the countertop. Massive fail on my man’s part.

The whole loaf had disappeared, along with most of the plastic, it seemed. My one consolation in the upset was that at least the dog would throw up or have horrible poops after all those jalapeños. She had neither, of course. And neither my man nor I forgot about that incident.

Fast forward to last weekend. A friend of his is having a gathering to celebrate the baptism of the children. The food at the small gathering is from Goode Company. I see the bread and instantly recall our denied grilled cheeses. I laugh about it and share the story. I am not mad about the whole thing at all. I find it comical. But I have always been a bit let down that we never got to have those grilled cheeses. So, I’m not sad or mens or anything when I tell the story, just to be clear. It is no sop story.

Anyway, the next day, the friend reaches out to my man to let him know that they have extra jalapeño cheese bread, and would we like to have it? Of course, we accept graciously and gratefully. He delivers the bread the next day to my man, and only asks that he get to see some photos of these grilled cheese.

It took me until today, a week later, to be able to spend the time and make them, naturally. So, we had stuck the partial loaf in the fridge and the full loaf in the freezer. Didn’t want to risk losing them to the Houston humidity. Even still, we did lose one half-piece cuff of the fridge pieces.

Nonetheless, I made an open-faced slice and a whole grilled cheese sandwich (only three pieces of bread were available from the fridge, you see) today. I tried for the first time coating them in mayonnaise first – will do that every time in the future now, because it is amazing – and then cooking them in Kerrygold butter. I used Brie that I sliced up into thin pieces (to be like shredded cheese, for melting consistency and ease), salami that I had sautéed in the butter already, and then raspberry compote that I had, all on the jalapeño cheese Texas toast style bread.

I kid you not, this grilled cheese sandwich was amazing. We both used utensils to eat them, and it was ridiculously satisfying to do so. They were just really, really good grilled cheese.

Of course, I reminded my man to get a photo of the two before attacking them, since his friend had specifically asked for photos. He took them – the most underwhelming food photos he’s ever taken, likely because he was so ready to eat what smelled and looked so good – but he complained that the sandwiches were totally not grilled cheeses. They had too many other things in them, he said, for them to be grilled cheese. I declared that as immediately false, and said the majority of the filling was still cheese, so they were grilled cheese sandwiches. (Obviously, we are ignoring the fact that grilled cheese sandwiches are typically truly sautéed cheese sandwiches, but whatever.)

He sent the photos to his friend with the message, “Hannah’s ‘grilled cheese’”. He then added the aforementioned message and inquiry, and the friend replied that it still was a grilled cheese. My man immediately shouted aloud, “Wring answer!” And we had a very good laugh about it while we finished off our awesome grilled cheese sandwiches.

Thank you, God. Amen.

P.S. I discovered today that Brie is a proper noun by law in France, as it is cheese named after the region named Brie. And now you know, too. 😛

Post-a-day 2023