Last night I made grilled cheese sandwiches with a tomato-olive salad from A Year in A Vegetarian Kitchen.

Jeff asked, "So, are you going to grill them on the Foreman?" It boggled his mind when I told him I was going to use skewers. (And the hated Calphalon grill pan- the Lodge still somewhere in Amazon.com's warehouse.) What you do, see, is dice up some yellow and red tomatoes - I used plum size tomatoes and quartered them- and mix with some finely chopped green olives, and a little oregono, and drizzle with some olive oil and salt and pepper. That's your salad.

Then you cut a loaf of french bread into thin slices, and some fresh mozzarella into little slices- 6 slices of bread per person and 5 of cheese- and put them on a skewer- bread, cheese, bread, cheese, bread, cheese, etc. Brush with a little olive oil, and then you grill them. I think this would have worked better on an actual grill, but even on the grill pan they worked well.

This is one of those things you think you could maybe have thought of yourself, but I know I never really would have. (I am not someone who would ever, on her own, think to combine tomatoes and olives or grill sandwiches on a skewer. This is why I am a competent home cook, and not a chef or a fancy Dorky Yankee cookbook author.) Wherever it came from, it was a perfect and lovely simple summer meal.