Brie, Pesto, and Sweet Pepper Grilled Cheese

Our second grilled cheese was inspired by the folks over at Two Peas and their Pod. We followed their recipe closely with the following alterations:

1. We made our own pesto using this recipe from the Food Network. We did use a little less oil than suggested and we're glad we did. We also used freshly grated Parmesan cheese in place of the Pecorino cheese.

2. Instead of store-bought sweet peppers, we roasted our own. This is super easy. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Line a baking sheet with aluminum foil, lay the pepper on its side and bake for 20 minutes, then flip it over and bake for another 20 minutes. 

3. For bread, we used our staple homemade wholewheat flaxseed bread.

As a side dish, we made pasta with fried lemons and chile flakes from this recipe posted by the New York Times. 

Guacamole Grilled Cheese

Our first grilled cheese was inspired by a post on one of my favorite websites, Mother Nature Network.

We followed the recipe closely, but altered the Best Damn Guacamole Ever! recipe to taste. Namely, we used a jalapeno pepper instead of a serrano pepper and only a couple of teaspoons at that. Having made salsa the day before, we figured out that the amount the recipe called for was way too spicy for our palates. We also used slightly less cilantro and slightly less lime juice because there was a LOT of juice in the lime that we used. As a side note, I have a child with many allergies, so I was stoked when I realized that the guacamole recipe is a vegan and safe for him to eat.

As the orignal post linked above indicates, melting the cheese before adding the guacamole is key!

All in all, it took us about 30 minutes to prepare and it is definitely a recipe we'll make again--both the sandwiches and the guacamole.