Panini

It's Panini time!

This is a great lunch or simple dinner if you like Paninis! You can make it really healthy too if you want to.

First grill up in a little olive oil (1 tbsp) all the sliced veggies you want on your sandwich. Meantime, lightly butter two slices of sour dough bread (or you can omit the butter or substitute a little olive oil in the pan). Add a few slices of your favorite lunch meat or roasted chicken to the grilled veggies. Last, top the pile of meat and veggies with two slices of your favorite cheese. In a grill pan or panini maker, lay down your first slice of bread. Next pile on your veggie, meat and cheese pile. Top with the other slice of bread and place another skillet on top of it if you don't have a panini maker. Press the skillet down on top of it till the cheese melts everything together and then give your sandwich a flip. You can cut it after it's done or in my case I couldn't flip the whole thing so I cut in half while it was in the pan so that I could flip it. =0)

In the pictures, I loaded this one with way too many veggies! They were coming out everywhere. Of course, I forgot to take a picture of the one that turned out all nice and neat like in a restaraunt. The one in the picture is just veggies and cheese, no meat.

What you can fill your panini with:

VEGGIES:

fresh spinach

green onion

red onion

yellow or white onion

olives

egg plant (peeled and grilled is delicious)

mushrooms

bell peppers (any color)

artichoke hearts

sun dried tomatoes

sliced tomato

MEAT:

turkey

chicken

steak

salami

pastrami

ham

CHEESE: (be creative)

provolone cheese

Parmesan cheese

Munster cheese

Havarti cheese

cheddar cheese

jack cheese

pepper jack cheese

You don't have to use seasoning unless you want to. The olive oil gives it a nice flavor and the meat and cheese is usually salty enough. If you make it vegetarian you may want to add a little salt or pepper. You can also add some minced garlic to any of the combos and that would give it a yummy taste too!