Even though I am sad to see the summer slipping away, there is nothing like coming home to one of my favourite winter-time meals – a simple dinner of grilled cheese and tomato soup.  I fancied up the ingredients in my sandwich to make it worthy of my dinner guests :).

This meal was created out of various leftovers in my refrigerator (although it did require a quick stop to Whole Foods). I used the leftover pickled cabbage from our tacos, leftover cream from a batch of strawberry ice cream I had made the day before and a quick sauce I had put together out of the Black Prince Heirlooms that were starting to soften up after being on the counter for a week.

For the soup, I cooked down all of the tomatoes I had leftover and then ran them through the food mill to separate out the skins and seeds.  I had originally intended to use the tomatoes for a pasta sauce, but soup sounded like a better use of the delicious tomatoes.  I used a little bit of vinegar to cut the sweetness of the tomatoes (any acid would do if your tomato sauce is ever too sweet), seasoned it with some oregano, salt and pepper and then added enough cream to thicken the soup.  Once the soup was simmering, I added some green onions for an additional dash of flavour.  Cream of tomato soup is so easy to make, especially if you have a head start with cooked tomatoes already – no more high-sodium, packaged soups for me!

For the grilled cheese, I picked up a loaf of Acme’s Green Onion Slab which I sliced in half and placed on the griddle to crisp up the inside.  I then smeared on a generous serving of goat cheese on each side, topped it with the pickled cabbage and red onions (I sliced and sauteed them in my cast iron pan) and added some pepper jack cheese.  I then set the griddle pan on low heat and allowed the residual heat to melt all the cheeses together.  I cut the bread into fun-shaped triangles to serve (grilled cheese should always be cut into triangles in my opinion).