So you’ve read one or two of these blogs and decided you like the idea of a “Sunday Dinner” experience of your own….what now?

First off…relax. So you don’t have a dining table that seats 14. You don’t even HAVE a dining table! Do you have a coffee table? An end table? A tray table? A cardboard box? (C’mon….you know you have a stack of Amazon boxes just waiting to be re-cycled.). How about a card table? Perfect for a small home and can be purchased for anywhere from $40 to $130. Some come with chairs!

Do you have more than one bowl? Plate? Spoon? A stove? A working hot plate? A frying pan?

No excuses, you’re ready to start. Remember, the whole point is not to put on a Martha Stewart style event with soup bowls cleverly carved out of gourds grown from your own garden. (“It’s a good thing”…my ass.)

The point is the personal connection and making yourself vulnerable to another human by inviting them into your living space for some food.

So start small.

One of my husband’s favorite movies, “Fandango” (starring a very young Kevin Costner) is about five friends just graduated from college and facing uncertain futures. They go on one last road trip together and one of them decides he is finally ready to make up with his ex-fiancé and get married—right, by god, NOW.

They’ve been on the road. They have nothing. So they start….by setting up a card table in the park. By chatting with (and charming) some of the locals in this small rural town, they pull off the wedding in what I consider to be the most romantic and bittersweet wedding scenes in movie history.

Get a card table, invite a friend (or three) over and have a soup and sandwich night. The recipes below are inexpensive, simple and don’t require a huge time commitment. When one of your friends (hopefully all of them) asks “What can I bring?”, TELL them! “How about dessert?” “Would you like to make a salad?” “An appetizer would be nice.” They become part of the event and take some of the pressure off you.

Turn on the movie and make it a “dinner and a movie” night (more on these to come).

Enjoy! And let me know how it goes.

Print Recipe

Tomato Garlic Soup & Grilled Cheese Sandwiches

Perfect when it's drizzly outside and you're short on time.

Prep Time15

Cook Time30

Course: Soup

Cuisine: American

Keyword: Soup, tomato, cheese, sandwich

Servings: 4 people

Cost: $10 – $15

Equipment

Medium sized soup pot or dutch oven – 8 – 12 quart size.
Large frying pan

Ingredients

For the Soup

1-2 tbls vegetable or olive oil
2 – 3 cloves garlic, minced
1 tbl paprika If you have it, try smoked paprika for a little extra kick.
1 64 oz tomato juice Still looking for that extra kick? Substitute V8 juice.
½ cup vegetable broth or water
¼ cup dry sherry

For the Sandwiches

8 slices sourdough bread Try to find the sourdough that resembles a regular loaf, rather than the fancy style.
1 stick butter
16 slices medium chedder cheese
4 slices Muenster cheese

Instructions

Heat the oil in the pot over medium high heat. Sauté garlic for about a minute until fragrant.
Add the paprika and sauté for about 30 seconds.
Add the tomato juice, vegetable broth and sherry.
Bring to a boil, then reduce heat to low and simmer for about 20 minutes.
While the soup simmers, butter one side of each of the slices of bread. Heat your frying pan on medium heat.
Put one (or two if your pan is big enough) pieces of bread, butter side down, into the pan. Immediately place two slices of the cheddar cheese, one slice of the muenster, and then an additional two slices of the cheddar cheese on the non-buttered side of the bread. Place the non-buttered side of another piece of the bread on top of the cheese.
Be patient. At this point you are slowly grilling the bread while the cheese melts so it will take a few minutes. If you turn the heat up too high it will just burn the bread and the cheese won’t have time to melt.
After a few minutes, lift up one of the sandwiches to see how the grilling is going. When it is the color you prefer (anywhere from golden to charcoal black), carefully and quickly flip the sandwich. If the bread slides a little, don’t worry….you should be able to nudge it back in place if you act quickly.
Repeat the process for the remaining sandwiches.
When finished grilling, let the sandwiches sit for just a few minutes before cutting them—otherwise the gooey-ness will be overwhelming.
Enjoy!