Meatless Monday - Grilled Cheese with Tomato & Basil (Lunch Edition)

It's the last Monday in February.  Which means it's our last "Meatless Monday" recipe.  This one is for those of you who are in the husband-doesn't-approve-of-meatless-meals-and-the-kids-are-having-grilled-cheese-for-lunch situation.

If you have these simple ingedients on hand then you're ready to make Tomato & Basil Grilled Cheese.

All you have to do is make up the sandwich like you usually would:

Then sprinkle a little, or a lot, of basil on there:

Add some sliced tomato:

And grill it until it's toasted and the cheese is melted:

Then enjoy!

Of course this is just the "what I had on hand" version.  You could amp this up a little by using a fancy cheese, better bread or fresh basil...  but when the kids are eating "plain old" grilled cheese this does just the trick!

Fruit Leather

Aldi had some jars of flavored applesauce this week so we decided to make some FRUIT LEATHER. This is only the second time we've done it so we're still figuring it out.

First cover a cookie sheet with plastic wrap.

Then pour out the jar of applesauce onto the cookie sheet.

Spread the applesauce as thin as you can, keeping it all on the plastic wrap.

I'd say it should look like this but now that it's done I'll tell you it should be thinner in the middle :)

Place tray(s) in the oven on the lowest setting. Mine was 170 degrees. If you need a reminder set the timer for about 4 hours and then check every hour or so after that.

Here's what it looked like after about 4 hours. We started ours at 2:30pm and finally shut the oven off at 10pm. The trays set in the oven all night which actually worked pretty well. One tray was perfectly done, the other still had some soft spots (possibly due to the chunks of cherries).

The fruit leather should peel back easily from the plastic wrap.

We cut ours with a pizza cutter. After laying out a strip of plastic wrap we folded the long sides in and rolled up. Yes, this is all my two trays made, minus a strip or so that was too mushy.

The verdict? We think you need a dehydrator to make this project really worth it. It is however a fun thing to do about once a year :)

If you've made fruit leather and have some great tips leave a comment!