Grilled Cheese & Tomato Soup (not what you may think...)

Grilled Cheese is a classic. The classic comfort food (feel free to dispute!). And like all classics, whether it's a Led Zeppelin song, Beethoven's Fur Elise, or the grilled cheese sandwich, putting your own spin on it-making a cover of it, so to speak-is not only welcomed but encouraged in my world.

Yours truly enjoying an American Grilled Cheese
@ The Grilled Cheese Grill Food Cart in the Alberta Arts District, Portland, Oregon

(Yes, if it ain't broke don't fix it. But, you see, I'm not trying to fix anything, or re-create it, or say that something was inherently or at all wrong about the original. I'm just doing my thing, inspired by the one and only original. That's what I call respect.)

Anyways, my mum and I went out for a detox spa treatment today and I decided a few days ago that I was going to treat her and my boyfriend to a homemade special lunch.

The Hungarian Grilled Cheese Sandwich
courtesy of  all you need is cheese 

The menu: Tomato Fennel Soup & Hungarian Grilled Cheese Sandwich. Yum!
Total Ingredients: 10 and 4, respectively
Cost: low
Difficulty Level: 5/10 (easy!)
Deliciousness Level: 8/10 (yum!)
Customer Rating ("customers" being my mum and my boyfriend): 4.5/5 (grand success!)

Even on a summer's day (perhaps not a plus-30 one) this meal would make for a great lunch! Making soups and sandwiches are seriously fun for me; they always seem less daunting than grand dinner dishes that I take one look at and turn away from in disdain. (I was looking at a Thanksgiving cooking course the other day and as soon as I saw that a recipe for a whole oven-baked turkey was going to be part of it, well, let's just say I'm not considering that class anymore.)

The soup recipe is from Company's Coming Soups cookbook and the sandwich is from the 2010 Fall Issue of all you need is cheese. The former you can easily find in any bookstore (or Zellers, or Home Outfitters, etc.) and the latter is free in many grocery stores. I will include both recipes in a following post for your thorough enjoyment.
P.S.: This issue of all you need is cheese is dedicated to the grilled cheese, so eat your heart out from the basic Italian panini to the more decadent Curry Me Brie by Chef Paul Rogalski or the seriously luxe French Toast Grilled Cheese by Chef Melissa Craig of Bearfoot Bistro in Whistler.