Bread, cheese, butter (Grilled cheese with prosciutto, pear, and fontina)

Though Aaron and I work the same hours and share the same nightmarish 2-hour commute, I am (unfairly) quite partial to reserving the kitchen as my exclusive domain. As such, I usually end up preparing dinner, so it's a bit of an extra special treat when Aaron volunteers to cook (or when I blithely volunteer him, anyway). He has no shortage of his own specialties and culinary history, but there's a dark side: Aaron spent several years of his formative existence declining to eat anything but Kraft macaroni and cheese and grilled cheese sandwiches. Now fully reformed and rehabilitated, he still carries a torch for the tried and true pairing of cheese and carbs, it's just that he's a little more enterprising when it comes to casting the supporting players. This grilled cheese sandwich starts with the holy trinity of bread, cheese, and butter, but also includes crisp, subtly sweet pear slices, salty prosciutto, and peppery arugula.

Extra crispy 

The Morning After (Chocolate Sandwiches)

On weekend mornings, I tend to be grumpily awoken by passionate, plaintive meowing for breakfast. Cats being fed, I trudge back to bedroom and try to get some more sleep. Early Morning James has one objective: more sleeping; and he will go to great lengths to ensure it. Of course, on some mornings you want to do something special and, at those times, it's nice to have a meal that can be easily prepared and quickly returned to the bedroom, too.

Morning pick-me-up

Our Daily Bread (Gruyere and Green Apple Grilled Cheese)

Hello, ladies and gents!

We woke up this morning and I suspect our heat may not be working. Maybe it's that it was icy cold and I had to keep nursing a fire all day, maybe its the silent, unmoving HVAC, but something is rotten in Denmark. Or at least our furnace/heater-type thingy. Technical term.

Either way, it was a day that seemed to call out, in particular, to hot food. After Aaron surprised me with pumpkin waffles for breakfast and, after we completed a run to gather additional firewood, I was ready to make something good.

Bazinga