The Monotonous Life

My life the past few weeks have been filled with boringness. Like, boring boringness. So I’m just going to tell you the most interesting part of last week for me…

making my first grilled cheese sandwich.

Yes, I’m 23 years old and the first time I have ever had a grilled cheese sandwich was last week. My mother never made them when I was younger and when I got older I never thought that much about them. Actually, that’s a lie. Every time I heard someone talk about them I always thought about how it’s just melted cheese on two pieces of bread and nothing more. I wondered how could something so simple be so good to have place in Americana pop culture. And then after wondering soon decided that because of how simple it is the sandwich was just overrated and I wasn’t missing much and moved on.

That was until I had nothing else in my refrigerator besides cheese, margarine, eggs, and a loaf of pre-sliced white bread. And realized, since I kinda hate fried eggs, that a grilled cheese was the only thing I had to eat. So I did what any reasonable person who had never had something before does-I youtubed grilled cheese to see how to make one. Yes, I knew of the ingredients but had no idea how to make one. That is the type of person you’re reading a blog post from.

Anyway, I searched and watched at least seven different people make grilled cheese sandwiches. And they did everything from using the oven or a microwave to melt the cheese (which seems kinda eww to me) to adding in apples and different types of meats. Which completely blew my mind. I thought a grilled cheese was simply cheese and nothing more. If I had known about this whole meat thing I would have probably made this sooner. But I digress.

So after watching the videos I decided to use the simply route shown on the Kraft youtube channel and go with it. I don’t have a picture of my first one but let’s just say that attempt wasn’t good. The bread burned, my kitchen smelled smokey, and I spent a good 15 minutes trying to stop the smoke alarm. Yes, I completely and totally failed with my first try at making grilled cheese. Here’s the thing-I should probably stop trying to cut corners like heating the frying pan while putting the sandwich together. Oh, and I should have let things get to room temperature. Taking both the cheese and the maragrine right out of the fridge and thinking it was going to be easy to melt (cheese) and spread (margarine) was my biggest mistake. Also I had seen on another vid that it took about four minutes. I tend to take things literally and that was a major mistake. And using cheap ass bread probably didn’t help either. While spreading the margarine on it the bread kinda tore up and thus burnt the cheese in the pan.  Yeah, it wasn’t pretty for the eyes, nose, or mouth.

After I got the majority of the smoke out and washed everything I tried again with better results. First I just melted the margarine for one side in the pan and put the sandwich in that. Then the margarine was easy to spread for the other side and instead of doing the spreading for the second side while in the frying pan I did it pre-frying, just put the buttered side (yes, I know it wasn’t butter but that’s the saying) on the top that way it didn’t take so long. I also just kinda eye balled it to see if the cheese was melting and didn’t wait for the four minutes suggested. And success. It was 10x better. And I finally got it. There are simply very few things better than melted cheese. I think next time I’m going to try adding in some of that meat (can we say bacon y’all?) and trying to make it somehow less greasy. It was good but I don’t like that much oil on the fingers after eating it because that means there was even more oil I ingested. Would the butter have made a difference there, making it somehow less oily and fatty? Although, again, it’s melted cheese so I probably shouldn’t be worrying about the fat content.

So that’s it. The highlight of last week. I’ve included a picture below because, well, I can I guess. And I was proud at my accomplishment. But now I’m wondering how come I can do a 15 step recipe without any difficulty but I needed two tries to make a decent grilled cheese? I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again-something is wrong with me.

Oh, before I forget I thought I’d tell y’all that I used American (basically the Kraft singles slice cheese thingy) and mozzarella cheese. Very good combination, but I think I’ll try other cheeses next time as well as adding meat. Also maybe I’ll try butter. I usually hate the flavor of it and that’s why I use margarine. I wonder if the flavor changes dramatically if using one or the other. Does anyone have any experience with both butter and margarine on grilled cheese?

(Also, I just wrote 800 words on a grilled cheese sandwich. For some reason I’m getting a good chuckle out of it.)

While in the frying pan. Obviously.