Today was just – gray.  Gray.  And wet.  And sleepy.  I kept opening the front door to check on the weather, hoping that the rain had let up so that I could run, and then closing the door and pouting.

Shane got home mid-afternoon, exhausted from Dark Lord Day debauchery and from the drive home, and we both crashed out on the couch in front of the Cavs game.  When we woke up, I was totally unmotivated to roast the chicken we’d planned to have for dinner, especially when Shane mentioned that he was craving a grilled cheese sandwich.

I wonder if this is a typically middle-American thing, or if grilled cheese sandwiches and bowls of soup are universal comfort foods.  For me, they’re an essential part of childhood – slices of American cheese peeled from their plastic wrappers, melted between two slices of bread and served with a bowl of Campbell’s cream of tomato soup – and then of my early adulthood, when Eva introduced me to homemade tomato bisque, and when Jeff Perri would stand his sandwiches on end to avoid total grease saturation.

Tonight’s sandwiches were made with a very sharp cheddar and slices of Avalon‘s Rustic Italian bread.  We were too hungry and too impatient to make soup from scratch, so we split a jar of smoky roasted red pepper soup.  Fast, simple, and just right on a rainy night.