Grilled cheese sandwich croutons & tomato soup

I give up. I’ve been trying to trace this back to at least a pseudo-source, but it seems everyone got it from somewhere else and several have their own ideas of how they “came up with it.”

So here are some sources. And their sources’ sources. Click around. Some have some really awesome-looking tomato soup recipes or unique twists on the grilled cheese sandwich part.

Crunchtime

Panini Happy

Café Chocolada

Wives with Knives

Mormon Mavens

Cheese and Choco

I don’t care if you just grab a can of cheap condensed tomato soup and make your sandwich with Wonderbread knock-off and those cheese slices that come wrapped in cellophane. Now matter how you spin it, this is an awesome idea to switch up a classic. Yum.

Individual veggie trays for travel – Bento box style!

Bento box veggie trays with ranch dressing, carrots, celery, tomatoes

Making bento boxes really sparked a whole new trend in the house for a while.

Our entire view on food shifted to keeping in mind what would work well to put in the lunches the next day. Even the dog got compartmentalized food a few times. And here, my mom skipped trying to travel with a full awkward veggie tray by doing several individually packed veggie bags.

The same could be done with plastic bowls as the larger holder, of course, and would be good for long car rides with the kids, picnics, etc. Actually, those Glad salad bowls that come with a little pop-out salad dressing bowl would work perfect for them, too, but I didn’t see those until quite a while after Mom did these. Why buy specialized bowls when you can work with what you already have anyway? These are much cuter.

Cooking Indian foods – Could we use a few more spices?

indian, picky eaters, spices, tomatoes | October 27, 2011 | By


13 bottles of spices…and the end one is Garam Masala, which is a blend of several more spices on its own….yikes!)

I would say I’m fairly minimalistic when it comes to spices. I use more than salt and pepper, but I like to stick with a few key ones in a dish, each one packing a punch or bringing an important taste.

When it comes to cooking Indian cuisine, though, the recipes seem to be so spice-heavy that it’s hard not to use a ton.

A couple years ago, I decided to have an Indian night where I introduced the style to the girls. I made fresh naan, rice, and 3 different main dishes.

I like going this route with new styles of dishes (especially for picky eaters) so there’s a higher chance of every person finding at least one variety they really like (or are at least able to eat, hehe). On the flip side, I could’ve only fixed one dish, had 2/3rds of the family dislike it and hungry, and thinking “ew, Indian food, I had that once and didn’t like it.” No thanks.

Seeing as how these pictures are from 2+ years ago, I actually don’t remember what exactly I fixed, much less which recipes I used. It appears to be an Indian daal  made with green lentils on the left and an aloo gobi featuring cauliflower and chickpeas on the right. Third dish? No idea what it was and I wasn’t taking pictures for the site at the time, so I didn’t make sure to have shots of everything, oops.

All I do know is that not all the spices got put up after dinner and I think I was still finding stray bottles days later. :P And yes, everyone found something they liked (even if it was mostly the naan flat bread that hit the spot, hehe).