Grilled Cheese

I’m not going to claim that I am an excellent cook, but I can usually hold my own in the kitchen. There are even some specialty dishes that friends and family think of as mine: chicken marsala, mocha chocolate chip cheesecake, and occasionally I do justice to a pan of enchiladas.

However, I can’t make a grilled cheese sandwich to save my life.

The problem with this particular sandwich, as I see it, is the time and attention it takes. I am a multi-tasker, you see. Or some might say I’m… distracted easily. Yesterday, the kids and I were engrossed in some gaming and good play. I decided to come up for air and offer sandwiches all around. This resulted in an order of pb&j from my son, a black-bean taco for my daughter, and the oldest… her request went something like this:

“What I’d really like,” she asks with pleading eyes and hands in a prayer position, “is some tomato soup and a grilled cheese sandwich.”

Feeling entirely optimistic, I almost had the word “sure!” out of my mouth before she continued, “And if it’s not too much to ask, could it please, please, please be not very burnt this time?”

Apparently I have a reputation.

In my super-state of positiveness, I assured her I would “stand right there” and “watch that sandwich with my very eyes until the cheese is just the right amount of melty and the bread is just the perfect shade of golden-brown.”

I remembered, too.

Except… there was a spot on the cabinet, a drip from my homemade latte from earlier in the morning. Surely wouldn’t hurt to wipe that up. And beside that… those apples from the last grocery trip were still in the bag. The counter space looks so much prettier when they are neatly piled in the fruit basket. And there’s that twist-tie from the tortillas that disappeared earlier! And when was the last time I took a vitamin? Oh, I still have brownie mix in the cabinet. That would make a nice afternoon treat.

Next thing I know, I’m standing in the laundry room, tossing wet clothes from the washer to the dryer, wondering what that smell is.

It soon dawned on me, of course, that I was making a grilled cheese sandwich. A please-not-very-burnt grilled cheese, at that.

I made it back to the stove in the nick of time.

“This,” I informed my daughter as I passed her sandwich to a small plate, “is a not-burnt grilled cheese sandwich. If you look closely you will see that though it may appear to be on the far side of toasted, there isn’t an actual charcoaled crumb on any inch of that bread.”

I think she’ll be making her own grilled cheese sandwiches very soon. Don’t they say desperation is the mother that drives us?

Hey, at least I didn’t set off the fire alarm… this time.