Grilled Ham, Apple and Cheese

Do your week­ends end up being as over-subscribed as your work days at this time of year? For instance, this week­end we: did the gro­cery run, attended a birth­day party, dropped off a box of used clothes and books to Good­will, under­took a deep, pre-holiday clean (who knew we had an aba­cus? nobody. who knows how to use it? nobody.), scaled the laun­dry moun­tain, hosted a play date, baked a batch of Christ­mas cook­ies and.… well, you get the idea. And the plan for being done all my Christ­mas shop­ping before Decem­ber looks like a cruel joke I played on myself. Sigh.… The next few week­ends are going to look the same but with some more hol­i­day fun/obligations thrown into the mix. Now that Julian is old enough to under­stand Santa and “Chrim­mas” it is going to be full on around here.

The week­ends of Decem­ber are nat­u­rally nuts. So Laura and I have been think­ing of lunches for you to come home to after run­ning errands on a chilly morn­ing. Is there any­thing as nice as a hot lunch? And it’s just not some­thing most of us can do dur­ing the week. But it’s nice if you’re com­ing home even for a quick pit stop to sit down to some­thing more than a pb&j. I’m a grilled cheese addict and I’ve been think­ing of ways to make them a lit­tle more… more! This isn’t a sand­wich I’d make at home as I’ve got three raw apple aller­gies in my crew but it’s really good. The ham makes it more sub­stan­tial and the apple adds a great bite. I always feel a pang of guilt when I eat raw apple even though both of my kids know to ask for an apple to be cooked if they feel like one. But on this day it was just me and our lovely pho­tog­ra­pher Maya in the stu­dio together. As soon as we got the shot we wanted we tucked in and it was great! The dijon mayo had a creamy kick, the bread was crisp — it was basi­cally a per­fect warm win­ter lunch. Thinly sliced pear would have been nice, too.

Let us know how you’re man­ag­ing the crazi­ness of this sea­son. We love hear­ing from you!

pho­tos by Maya Vis­nyei