A gray day in December just screams for a grilled cheese sandwich and tomato soup, so thankfully we had everything on hand to have the combo for lunch. Here is my take on the most authentic version…..

The sandwich: You can use any kind of bread, but for authenticity sake I used Italian bread–the packaged kind that is essentially glorified white bread. For the best results, also use real butter, thawed to room temperature (seriously, the sandwich will come out perfectly crispy, and you will not have ingested any of that plastic tasting fake stuff). Slice about a quarter inch slab of butter and place in a quality nonstick skillet. Then butter the outsides of two bread slices. Meanwhile, grab either two thin slices of American cheese or cut a few thin slices off a log of Velveeta. Put the cheese on the bread so that the buttered sides are facing out. Warm the skillet over medium heat and once the butter is melted, put the sandwich down. Cook for about 60-90 seconds or until brown and crispy, then flip the sandwich. Cook for about 30-45 more seconds (the second side cooks in about half the time, but I’m not sure why that is). Slide onto a plate and slice in half if you like.

The soup: With all due respect to chefs who make killer tomato soup, or to soup companies that create nice versions of tomato soup, I have to say that nothing quite compares to Campbell’s. And make it with a can of milk instead of water for a nice creamy soup. I’m not sure if it’s because this is the tomato soup my mom made growing up, but regardless, it always tastes perfect and awesome.

I’ll work on more versions of the combo in the next week or so. Meanwhile, do yourself a favor and make this one–I guarantee it will be the best lunch you have all week. Okay, maybe, but you get the point.

I had good intentions with another bacon recipe to post this past weekend, but lo and behold, not every recipe I develop is any good. My plan was to take refrigerated crescent rolls, and fill them with bacon and sausage and cheese. Mmmmm, breakfast-y goodness, right? Well, not really, and this makes me wonder how many recipes out there that are really good actually fail sometimes and fail as miserably as my breakfast sandwich.

I cooked a bunch of bacon, and our 4-year old son ate more of it than I needed. That’s my boy. I was left with two slices. I cooked a link of turkey breakfast sausage. Then I took the rolls out or should I say, Mrs. Mike and I (mostly her) had to fight to open the package, which should have been our first sign. I won’t say the brand, because I don’t want to throw anyone under the bus here, but I will say this–the crescent rolls I bought were butter flavored. Now, you’d think that anything’s better with butter, right? The catch here is I don’t think it’s real butter we’re talking about.

Anyway, I assembled the roll by pinching two triangles together to make a rectangle, and then I laid down some cheese, bacon and the sausage link and rolled that sucker up. I baked it for a few minutes longer than what the recipe suggested, and took a bite. B-L-E-C-H. I took another bite. B-L-E-C-H. It was the butter flavored roll, not anything else that made it disgusting. I imagine that with normal crescent rolls or biscuits, this sandwich would taste really good. But I haven’t recovered from that vile butter taste to give it a go.

I will say this, though…..it’s been fun writing about bacon and coming up with recipes, so why not extend bacon week for another little while? I’ll be preoccupied for a few days but will deliver more bacon posts next week and into the following week before turning our attention to Halloween candy. Sound good? I thought so.

Earlier this week, I wrote about my pet peeve for tomatoes and the fact that grocery stores do not carry good ones right smack in the middle of summer, a.k.a. tomato season. But that was just the start of my thoughts on food pet peeves I have. So with that, here are a few more…..

Soft pretzels dipped in butter–I blame Auntie Anne’s for this, but now butter-drenched pretzels are the only ones you can buy in any mall across the country. I might be old-school here (no, I KNOW I’m old-school), but I long for soft pretzels you can buy that are drenched in nothing but salt. Seriously, butter goes on a pretzel like ketchup goes on ice-cream. Okay, that’s extreme, but you get my drift. But the final straw happened to me recently when I was in Target and tried to buy a pretzel without the butter. They looked at me funny, and said they needed to drench it in order for salt to adhere to it. I asked if I could buy the display one, which appeared to be butter-less, and they said that that was a fake pretzel. Go figure.

Hydration systems for produce–Seriously, do you really need to drench the lettuce and herbs until they practically wilt and turn brown? And do they have to spray every 10 seconds so that when I reach for something I get soaked?

Peaches–This is akin to my tomato gripe. Why is it that more than half of grocery store peaches are hard as a rock? I’ll tell you why. Because they pick them way before they should be picked. And they don’t ripen. Those hard ones only become slightly less hard, and they crunch when you bite into them like an apple. That’s just wrong.

High-fructose corn syrup–It’s known to be really bad for us, so why is it the primary ingredient now in things like soft drinks and popsicles? And why is it in supposedly healthy items like whole wheat bread? I bet soon we’ll be brushing our teeth with the stuff.

Raw onions–If you’ve eaten a raw onion, you know that it has an extremely strong and pungeant taste. Cooked onions are delicious and sweet, but raw onions are vile. So why does every restaurant insist on throwing them on my salad? I don’t always remember to ask for them to be omitted and in that case have to remove them myself. Inevitably, even if I use a fork, the onion smell gets on my hands and I can’t wash it off for three days. And if I miss a piece in my salad and eat it by accident, I have to deal with the lingering taste in my mouth the rest of the day. I also have horribly bad breath to deal with. And I feel like I could drink seven gallons of water. Seriously, why?? And how do you people who eat big slabs of raw onion on your burger taste the freaking burger?

Seasoned fries–I may be old-school again here, but I’ve grown tired of excessive seasoning on my French fries. Fries are best when they are cooked in oil and lightly salted–that’s it. But restaurants, and I’m talking in particular about chains, decided at some point that coating my fries with additional spices like pepper, paprika, garlic powder, chili powder or all of the above was a good idea. Let me help you here…it’s never a good idea.

Servers who don’t use a pen–This is more of a restaurant-only pet peeve. Why do servers insist on trying to remember my order as well as everyone at the table’s order without writing it down? I am never impressed if you don’t screw up my order, but I’m always impressed if you have the class (and common sense) to write my order down so that it’s harder to screw up.

Hey, that was fun! Feel free to add yours….