I needed a quick and easy dinner idea because I was exhausted and not looking for anything where I would have to follow more than say, 2 steps. We had some tomato soup (from Ruby's!) to use up so I decided on grilled cheese, tomato soup, and fries. Non of this sounded very healthy. I don't think tomato soup can count as a vegetable unless you make it from scratch. I needed a vegetable. I'm not a big fan of just eating a little pile of peas on my plate (but I do it sometimes and I do it for my toddler regularly) but I also try to incorporate a vegetable into the dinner somehow.
I considered adding something to the soup but I didn't want it too chunky since my husband likes to dip his sandwich into the soup. After hopping on Pinterest, I found this idea: adding broccoli to the sandwich! It's so simple yet brilliant. Broccoli and cheese are always a good combination. How did I not come up with this on my own?? I have added tomato slices to grilled cheese before but tomatoes are kind of juicier than I'd like and I can totally taste the tomato. With this broccoli recipe, you can barely taste the broccoli at all!
Basically, all you do is cook up some broccoli, chop it small, and add it to the grilled cheese.Do be sure to drain it well after cooking because any leftover water will make for a juicy sandwich. For the adult sandwiches, I use two slices of cheese so I put the broccoli in between the two slices so the melted cheese can hold it in while I flip it. For my toddler, I only use one slice of cheese so the flipping was a bit trickier but it still worked out (Not to toot my own horn but I should also mention I'm a pro at making grilled cheese. Everyone who has tried mine agrees that I make the best ones).
When giving the sandwich to a toddler, I cut it in half and then I cut those halves in thirds (like strips) so they can easily pick them up and eat them. However, be sure to wait a minute or two after cooking it before you cut it up so the cheese doesn't just ooze out everywhere.
Surprisingly, after watching us dip our stuff in our soup, my toddler also wanted to! She is behind in the whole toddlers-love-to-dip thing even when we have done it in front of her before. We didn't give her her own cup of soup though because that's just asking for a mess so we dipped hers in ours and she loved it! Definitely making this again!
