Food Of The Day: Grilled cheese

My alarm went off at 4:45 am today. I rolled over, hit Off, and then glanced over my left shoulder, surprised there wasn't a child wedged in between me and my husband.

I swung out of bed and shuffled (accurate verb) downstairs.

The first coherent thought in my head: "I want a grilled cheese sandwich."

For real. Who else thinks like this? Times like this I believe I may have a legit mental problem.

Anyway, I haven't had a grilled cheese since I don't know when and I have no idea why I thought of it when I woke up this morning. But I was going to make it happen.

This was good for at least one reason: I've been in a food rut, eating the same-old, same-old and it's good to mix things up.

I had to go to the store later anyway, so I seriously thought about how to construct this sandwich for relatively low Points. Sure, I could whip up a food-porny one with real cheese, real butter and some delicious, hearty not-Points-friendly bread from the bakery.

That's one of the things I love about being a Weight Watcher, we can always find a way to make something lower-Point. It's like a conditioned response, mention a recipe and you can almost see our WW wheels turning, How can I knock that down?

However, I wanted to keep the Points for this endeavor reasonable. If I want to blow out my Points, I'm heading to the bakery and it ain't for bread.

First off, bread - what was I going to use for bread? I could use the - let's face it - crappy, airy, smooshy, really-low-Point bread. But you need decent bread in a grilled cheese and even I'm not cheap enough with my Points to go that route.

I also wanted a decent-size sandwich, so that ruled out good bread in a silver dollar size.

Then it hit me: lavash. Lavash! I love lavash bread. It's my favorite bread. I use it as a wrap. I eat it as toast. I use it as pizza crust. And a whole sheet (pretty big, like a foot long) is only 2 Points.

So I got my lavash and then checked out the Points hit on 2% cheese. 2 Points per slice. Eh, pass. I checked out Weight Watchers cheese and found a Pepper Jack for 1 Point per slice. This would do.

I got home and cut the lavash in half, then half again (2 Points). Two sandwiches! I added 2 slices of cheese to each sandwich (4 Points total) and covered each with 1T of real fake butter (1 Point). Real fake butter as in this stuff, not I Can Believe It's Butter-Flavored Chemicals (which I do use).

I threw them on the griddle, saddled them with a bacon press and watched them like a hawk so they didn't burn. Seriously, I don't watch my children as closely as I did these sandwiches.

They smelled awesome. The lavash browned and the cheese started to bubble out of the side. Done.

Wow, so good. Seriously, for 7 Points, two cheesy, gooey, buttery sandwiches. Make it happen, heed my pre-dawn food cravings. You won't be sorry.