CEiMB – Sweet and Spicy Grilled Cheese Sandwiches

When I make grilled cheese, this is how I start:

Then I add a whole mess of shredded cheese (usually Ementhaller) to some whole wheat bread. I cook the sandwich until the bread is crisp and the cheese melts over the sides and onto the pan.

I always knew this wasn’t an optimal meal for my cholesterol, but that didn’t stop me from eating grilled cheese sandwiches a lot. And when they’re made with butter in a screaming hot cast iron pan, something magical happens.

Well, unless you have a heart attack and don’t get to savor your sandwich. Which is why, when it was my turn to pick the recipe for Craving Ellie in My Belly, I jumped for this one. I LOVE grilled cheese, but I have to find a way to make it healthier so I can continue to enjoy it without feeling like I’m gambling with my health. Ellie is one step ahead of me.

Ellie’s recipe includes caramelized red onions (the sweet) and Cheddar and pepper Jack cheese (the spicy).

I learned (again) a lesson with this one. Read the recipe completely before starting. Don’t think “I’ve made a zillion (actual number) grilled cheese sandwiches and I know how they go so I’m going to bypass the instructions.” No. Ellie gives key pieces of information (turn the heat to LOW) that will keep you from burning the bread and not melting the cheese.

I like a little more sweet and spicy in mine, so I added some jalapeno jelly. You could also add spicy mustard or honey mustard. If I had any in the house, I would have tucked in a few cilantro leaves as a nod to my favorite grilled cheese sandwich at Big Sky Cafe. It’s no longer on the menu but that used to be the quintessential grilled cheese for me. Ellie’s comes close, very close. In fact, it is way better than my butter laden go-to version. Give it a try…your arteries will thank you!

Sweet and Spicy Grilled Cheese Sandwiches (serves 4)

2 teaspoons canola oil
1 large red onion, finely diced
Salt
Freshly ground black pepper
3 ounces sharp Cheddar, thinly sliced, divided
8 slices whole-wheat bread
3 ounces pepper Jack cheese, thinly sliced, divided
1 large or 2 medium beefsteak or hothouse tomatoes, sliced
Cooking spray

Heat oil in a non-stick skillet over medium-high heat. Lower heat to medium. Add onions and saute, stirring, until edges are browned, about 10-12 minutes. Season to taste with salt and freshly ground black pepper.

Place 3/4 ounce Cheddar on one slice of bread. Spread 1 tablespoon caramelized onions on top of cheese and top with 3/4 ounce of pepper Jack. Top with 1 large or 2 medium tomato slices and other slice of bread. Repeat with 3 other sandwiches.

Spray a non-stick skillet or griddle with cooking spray and heat until hot. Place sandwich on griddle and weigh down with a heavy skillet or plate. Lower heat to medium-low and grill until underside is a deep brown but not burnt, and cheese is partially melted, about 5-6 minutes. Flip sandwich and grill other side an additional 4-5 minutes. Slice in half and serve hot.

CEiMB – Ellie Krieger’s Thai Mushroom Salad

Our Craving Ellie in My Belly selection for the week was Grilled Thai Beef Salad. I’m not a huge fan of beef, and I’m chickened out, so I decided to take this one vegetarian and make it with portobello mushrooms. I also had some corn on the cob in the fridge so I grilled that up with the mushrooms.

The marinade/dressing was incredibly flavorful, combining lime juice, soy sauce, red chili paste, garlic and ginger. This is the second Ellie dressing in the last few weeks that I have completely flipped over (the other one was the dressing for the cobb salad, and I mixed up another batch of that one just the other night). I had a huge bunch of Thai basil from my CSA box, and it added an incredibly fragrant hit of flavor to this salad.

This salad was yet another Ellie recipe that I looked at and thought it sounded rather pedestrian, but oh my, the flavor combination was amazing! This one is going into the rotation. I encourage you to try it with the mushrooms or different grilled veggies in addition to or instead of meat (or even a nice piece of swordfish). But if you like steak, try that as it sounds like it would be great.

If you’d like the recipe, check out Jen B’s Cooking Carveout as Jen will have it, or you can find it on the Food Network site here.

This will likely be my last CEiMB post as I will be taking a break from active blogging for the month of Ramadan. I’m trying to get a few posts up before Saturday but arrrggghhhh I’m so behind! If you leave a comment here I’ll stop by and visit, but this is a good opportunity to get my rampant blog addiction under control! I’ll be back after Sept. 20th.

Peace.

CEiMB – Stuffed Turkey Burgers

Sore back or not, a girl has to eat, so before work this morning I threw together this week’s Craving Ellie in My Belly pick, stuffed turkey burgers (selected for us by Peggy at Pantry Revisited – thanks, Peggy!), substituting sun dried tomatoes for the roasted red peppers and adding capers, both of which I added in abundance, making these even more delicious.

A little more stuffing than Ellie had in mind

CEiMB Late Edition – Cobb Salad

Work has been insane these last two weeks. Thursday night I got home around 11, Friday night 9, and last night 8:30. Today I was able to work from home. That gave me the opportunity to enjoy this week’s Ellie pick for dinner.

I planned to grill the chicken before watching the finale of Next Food Network Star (what did you think, did you want Melissa or Jeffrey to win?). Surprisingly, the grill was out of gas but I was too lazy to swap out the spare tank. So I whipped out my grill pan and made the chicken on the stove. Then it was a snap to put together the delicious dressing, chop the avocado and crumble the blue cheese. I skipped the ham (don’t eat it) and the hard boiled eggs (not a fan).

This was a quick and easy salad, perfect for a weeknight dinner or impressive as a weekend picnic at the beach or park. For me, the dressing was the best part.

This wonderful salad was chosen for us by Gabi at The Feast Within. If you’d like to try this one out, you can find the recipe here.

CEiMB – Aromatic Noodles with Lime Peanut Sauce

Whew! I barely made this one.

My internal calendar broke this week. I knew without a doubt that the recipe this week was the onion rings, and I had made peace with skipping them since it’s kinda hot and we don’t have air conditioning (so turning on the oven isn’t so appealing). Then Peggy posted about these noodles last night and I thought “Peggy’s confused about what the recipe is this week.” Never occurred to me that I could be confused (which is ironic since I’m confused most of the time).

A quick check of the Craving Ellie in My Belly website confirmed that there’s nothing wrong with Peggy’s memory. Mine however, not so good.

Since everyone raves so much about this recipe, I wanted to make it, but I was out of peanut butter, snap peas, snow peas, fresh ginger, limes, peanuts… And I was DETERMINED to make the actual recipe this week, not some hybrid aberration that is food on a plate but that’s where the similarity to the recipe ends. So, even though I am beyond busy at work this week, at lunchtime I left the office, left campus and headed to Whole Foods. I’m sure people who saw me there thought I had won one of those contests where you get to run through the store and grab everything you can in five minutes. I resisted the urge to run all of the red lights and stopped by the house (wouldn’t you know practically everything I bought had to be refrigerated), waking the cat from her nap with the same take-no-prisoners ninja attack technique that had startled so many at Whole Foods. Rush back to work and settle in my office as if I had been there all along.

When I got home from work, I decided that I would nix the steaming of the vegetables and would instead boil them briefly in the pasta water. Otherwise, I made the recipe EXACTLY as Ellie wrote it. I know, I was shocked too. Well, I did double the sauce and use fusilli instead of spaghetti and use a full pound of pasta (the bag ripped and it all fell in the pot) and add lime zest but it was EXACTLY the same as the recipe.

Things were going well until I turned on the food processor and somehow, soy sauce and peanut butter sprayed out of it ON TO THE CAMERA. Primal scream, drop everything, clean clean clean. Cooking is so relaxing.

M. walked in the door just as I had plated the serving for the photo and was thrilled that we weren’t eating leftover lentil chili again. Really, I could have given him cereal and I think he would have been happy. But he loved this, and even had seconds. In fact he ate so much, he turned down chocolates after dinner. That’s how good it was. It made a ton of leftovers, and I’m glad, because you can dress this one up with grilled portobello mushrooms, chicken, fish, shrimp, or tofu.

Thanks go out to Beth at Supplicious for choosing this wonderful recipe for us. And of course to Peggy, for being my reminder of what week it is.

CEiMB – Lobster, er, Chicken Roll

This week’s Craving Ellie in My Belly pick is compliments of Duffy at Lonely Sidecar. She is hands down one of my favorite bloggers. If she hadn’t picked this week, I probably would have skipped since I’m allergic to shellfish and I’ve been down with the flu. But I decided to get creative and see what I could do with this recipe, while staying true to it so it was recognizable (unlike my usual Ellie recipe makeovers).

Just kidding. The closest this comes to Ellie’s recipe is that I made a sandwich. A chicken sandwich, with capers and mustard mixed in. Served not on a roll but on a bagel.

It was a really tasty sandwich, until I noticed the texture of the chicken. See, it was left over from making stock, so it had boiled for 4 hours. Why was I surprised that it was mushy?

Sorry Duff, I wiffed on your pick. I wish I could have used lobster instead of mushy chicken. Maybe next time I’ll try salmon.

If you’d like to check out the real recipe, you can find it here or here.

Time for a nap.

CEiMB – Lobster, er, Chicken Roll

This week’s Craving Ellie in My Belly pick is compliments of Duffy at Lonely Sidecar. She is hands down one of my favorite bloggers. If she hadn’t picked this week, I probably would have skipped since I’m allergic to shellfish and I’ve been down with the flu. But I decided to get creative and see what I could do with this recipe, while staying true to it so it was recognizable (unlike my usual Ellie recipe makeovers).

Just kidding. The closest this comes to Ellie’s recipe is that I made a sandwich. A chicken sandwich, with capers and mustard mixed in. Served not on a roll but on a bagel.

It was a really tasty sandwich, until I noticed the texture of the chicken. See, it was left over from making stock, so it had boiled for 4 hours. Why was I surprised that it was mushy?

Sorry Duff, I wiffed on your pick. I wish I could have used lobster instead of mushy chicken. Maybe next time I’ll try salmon.

If you’d like to check out the real recipe, you can find it here or here.

Time for a nap.

Ellie’s Energy Bars

Inspired by the success of the breakfast cookies we made for Craving Ellie in My Belly this week, I decided to throw together these quick and easy Energy Bars. It was either make these or clean the house. Cooking and baking always trump cleaning the house. Not a good thing.

I loved how easy the prep was…throw the ingredients in the food processor, pulse, put in a pan coated with cooking spray and bake. That’s it. Truly, if Ellie came to my house and made them for me, they still wouldn’t be easier because I’d have to clean the house before she got here.

They smell amazing while they bake. Let them cool 15 minutes before slicing into them. Served warm, they are delicious. The apricots, maple syrup and dates make them chewy and delicious, while the oats, wheat germ and sunflower seeds give them whole grain staying power. I added about 1/8 teaspoon of salt and 1/3 cup of toasted flax seeds.

Give this one a try! It’s easy and the bars keep well in the freezer…if they last that long! You can find the recipe here.

Ellie’s Energy Bars

Inspired by the success of the breakfast cookies we made for Craving Ellie in My Belly this week, I decided to throw together these quick and easy Energy Bars. It was either make these or clean the house. Cooking and baking always trump cleaning the house. Not a good thing.

I loved how easy the prep was…throw the ingredients in the food processor, pulse, put in a pan coated with cooking spray and bake. That’s it. Truly, if Ellie came to my house and made them for me, they still wouldn’t be easier because I’d have to clean the house before she got here.

They smell amazing while they bake. Let them cool 15 minutes before slicing into them. Served warm, they are delicious. The apricots, maple syrup and dates make them chewy and delicious, while the oats, wheat germ and sunflower seeds give them whole grain staying power. I added about 1/8 teaspoon of salt and 1/3 cup of toasted flax seeds.

Give this one a try! It’s easy and the bars keep well in the freezer…if they last that long! You can find the recipe here.

CEiMB – Breakfast Cookies

Ellie, how did you know?

How did you know that when you say “breakfast cookie,” this

is what I think of. I mean, if it’s a cookie, and you eat it for breakfast, that makes it a breakfast cookie, right?

Um, no.

So Ellie designed a cookie for me. She must have heard me scream when I climbed on the scale a few weeks back.

Thanks, Ellie.

There was a bit of measuring and all that, but these cookies were fairly easy to put together. My hand slipped and I added a few more walnuts than the recipe called for. The recipe warns that the “dough” will be very wet, and it was, almost like a muffin batter. I grated nutmeg and it smelled amazing while it was baking. After the cookies cooled, I sampled one. Frankly, it was fantastic, so much better than I thought it would be. It was very cakey, but the spices and the moistness took this one right over the top. These are going in the freezer, so I can retrieve one for breakfast as needed.

Many thanks to Natalie of What’s for Supper? for this super pick.