I have been in a total cooking rut.  We’ve been enjoying fresh goodies from the garden, beets, lettuce, sweet corn, cabbage, and tomatoes but the rest of the meal has been ho-hum.  A while back I saw a recipe for Bacon and Jalapeno Grill Cheese Sandwiches.  I wanted to try the recipe but couldn’t as my jalapenos aren’t quite ready yet.  Then I happen to go to the Amish and they had a ziplock bag of  jalapenos for seventy five cents so I picked them up and decided to  try out the recipe.
They were good but a little too spicy for me. Â Hubby on the other had was completely in love. Â He likes spicy things. Â To cut the spice on mine I diced up the jalapeno’s and only put half as many on…then it was wonderful. Â You can find the recipe by following this link.
I would change the recipe though in that I would make six or seven sandwiches with the amount of cheese…for me and hubby, I actually think I will just be cutting the original recipe in half. Â He keeps reminding me that I need to figure out how to just cook for two. Â I think that the cooking for two thing is really going to be hard on me!! Â I’ve spent 25 years cooking for many more than two!!
Cooking for two isn’t as hard as cooking for one.. I make meatloaf, mashed potatoes, mashed sweet potatoes, soups and freeze in individual amounts. Make the mess once and eat for a long time. I cut the meat loaves into pieces and freeze side by side on plastic wrap, flip over add two more, etc., I drop the mashed potatoes on cereal box waxed paper on a cookie sheet with a large muffin or ice cream scoop, flatten a little, freeze until firm and put into zip lock bags. Have a collection of old plastic 8 oz yogurt cups with lids for the soup, or the small smart balance or other spread cups work well, depending how big servings you need. Have been doing this for years..
Took me years to adjust. Recipes in my head had to be adjusted way down and it just did not taste the same. Went from frying 2 chickens to 1 with leftovers. Grocery shopping was a joke as well! Had to learn all over again. Try making a small pot of soup ugh! Have to freeze a lot of leftovers ! A small pan of gravy ? It would be lumpy or watery , things I made without even thinking about it became flops! I had 4 kids and always friends to feed so, I feel your pain. Good luck!
It made my throat hurt just reading that! But I’ll bookmark the post for when I’m feeling healthy, because it sounds good. :-)
We make these all the time, but we usually exchange the jalapenos for fresh green chili. Wouldn’t think of making grilled cheese any other way. We are a spicy-loving family and jalapenos and green chili go into just about everything.
As for the cooking-for-2 dilemma… I struggle with that too. I usually save the big things for when I have a cowboy crew to feed and I send food to the family at our north camp. I freeze things that can be frozen and you’ll find you end up spending less time in the kitchen. I also load up our college girl with food when she comes home. She loves to cook, but I am told that Mama’s home cookin’ is missed. :) You’ll have enough people coming and going that you probably won’t have to cut back too much.
I had the same cooking for 2 problem when I first got married. I am the oldest of 8 kids, so I did a lot of cooking growing up. It took me years to downsize my mom’s recipes from 10 servings to 2.