I’ve been having some serious college-like late night eating habits recently.

But I’ve also been running.  A lot.  That makes it ok, right?

Anyway, who needs justification?  Brad has been working nutty hours this week at the restaurant because one of the other chefs is out of town.  He gets up at 9, is at work by 10, and I’ll see him again around 1AM.

Ugh.

On top of this, I’ve been working all weekend, too, and when we both get home from our long days of feeding people, we really don’t feel like cooking.  But we are usually starving.  And the funny thing about Santa Monica is that EVERYTHING shuts down at eleven.

Ha.  Ha.

So when Brad doesn’t feel like whipping up something crazy amazing from whatever leftovers are in our fridge, it comes down to pizza or macaroni and cheese for us.  At 1AM.  Super healthy, I know.

Welcome to the life of a restaurant industry employee.

Last night I had a little bit of energy left over when I got home and I decided I was going to class up our late-night routine a little.  Upon searching through our fridge, I pulled together the ingredients for this spin on one of our after-hours favorites.

Apple & Chorizo Grilled Cheese

The thing I love about grilled cheese is that you can use any type of cheese and you can add whatever you want to beef it up a little.  I found a Sharp White Cheddar Cheese in the fridge and thought it’d be a fun twist.

I also like to butter the bread really well to get that nice golden color.

I usually put a tomato slice in mine, but since I ate all of our delicious tomatoes already, I substituted a slice of Pink Lady Apple from my Farmer’s Market buys.  A little sweet, a little crunch…

Brad sliced up some of the chorizo sausage we almost always have hiding in our refrigerator’s meat drawer and we had ourselves a snack.

A gooey, salty, rich and sweet snack.

So rich, in fact, that we had one sandwich leftover.

You know what I’ll be eating for lunch today!

So experiment with your grilled cheese if you want to make them a little more adventurous and grown-up.  Add meat, fruit, jelly, or whatever you can dream up!

Or don’t, and enjoy the nostalgia that a great Grilled Cheese with plain old American cheese brings you.  Do you dip yours in ketchup?  Tomato soup?

Mmmm…

xoxo