Our garden this year has had a very peculiar growing pattern. The plants seem to be growing like crazy, but the vegetables are just not ripening as fast as expected. I don’t feel so bad though, as most of the farmers I have spoken to at the farmers market have been experiencing a similar pattern with their crops.

I decided to make use of what I could today to grill up some veggies for sandwiches. Our local Fresh and Easy has the most delicious Green Chili Sourdough which makes for some great sandwiches.

All I could pull together from the garden was a poblano pepper, an eggplant, arugula and a yellow tomato – I’m not complaining though – it was enough to make a fantastic sandwich. 

Ingredients

• 1 ripe avocado
• 1 bunch basil
• 1 tbsp lemon juice
• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 1 serrano chili
• salt to taste

1. Mix all the ingredients in your food processor until uniform.
2. Slice up the eggplant and poblano along with some yellow and red peppers and season them with some salt and pepper before grilling them on the stove – I sprayed a little bit of oil onto the grill pan, but otherwise, just allowed the natural juices from the veggies take over.
3. While the veggies are cooking, make an avocado basil spread (ingredients above) – seemed like a much healthier option to pesto, and easier to make.
4. Grill the bread, spread the basil/avocado spread onto each side, layer on the grilled veggies and then top it off with some jalapeno jack cheese (which you can omit to make this recipe vegan) and arugula.  I usually don’t add any extra oil to my bread – I don’t like having greasy hands from holding my panini.
   
5. Last step, put it all together and add some weight onto the sandwich so it all presses together into yummy goodness.