Soup and Sandwich.

There is a lot to be said for the simple soup and sandwich combination. I for one think this is a perfect meal anyway you slice it. The potential pairings of soup to sandwich are endless and it really is all a matter of taste. The other night I made my Roasted Red Bell Pepper Soup and served it up with grilled tomato, basil, pesto and fresh mozzarella cheese on sourdough. It was amazing! You can find my prize winning Roasted Red Bell Pepper Soup on Paula's website. It is a super easy and super satisfying soup that really warms up a cold day. One of my favorite things about this soup is you can roast the peppers ahead of time and just peel and seed them up and stick them in the freezer. When peppers go on sale I will get a bunch and do just that so when I want this soup I just grab a bag of the roasted peppers from the freezer and I am set.

Peppers getting all roasted in the oven (which I need to clean).

Cooled peppers.

Peeling cooled pepper. I then rinse them to remove all the seeds. Now the sandwich was easy 1. Take two slices of sourdough spread jarred pesto on one piece of the bread. 2. put on an even layer of fresh mozzarella cheese (so yummy). 3. Chiffonade up some leaves of fresh basil and scatter some on top of the fresh mozzarella. 4. put on an even layer of sliced fresh tomatoes. 5. put on the tops slice of bread. 6. spread a little soft butter on the bread. 7. flip sandwich into a heated iron skillet butter side down. 8. Butter the other piece of bread lightly while in pan. 9. weight sandwich down with another smaller iron skillet. Sort of like Panini style without the expensive press. 10. toast both sides to perfection and serve with hot bowl of soup.

This combination beat that ol grilled cheese and canned tomato soup of my childhood hands down. I have plans for other flavor combinations using rye bread fontina cheese and honeycrisp apples or maybe smoked salmon and gruyere cheese...see what I mean the possibilities are endless. Use your imagination and have fun with it. It is like re-inventing the wheel...you just roll with it.