Panini sandwiches in a Cuisinart sandwich press

There has been and there will be more sushi entries to come because apparently, the family is all about seafood and sushi for the holidays. So I will give you a sushi break and take us back to American cuisine for some toasty panini sandwiches. Phil received a panini maker as a gift one year and we absolutely love it. We often make paninis for lunch or dinner and have just rediscovered our love for the machine.

We bought Lucerne pepperjack cheese, Kraft chipotle mayo, Oroweat country white and wheat loaves, turkey and chicken, alfalfa sprouts, spring salad mix, tomatoes...

...Seneca apple chips and costco sized guacamole.

Here's the Cuisinart panini press we used. Loves it!!! Awesome machine. I would recommend it to anyone. This was a gift but right now I see it on Amazon. There are so many brands and any grill would do actually, even the George Foreman grills.

(steps not pictured because they are uninteresting)

1. spread chipotle sauce on bread, add deli meat, cheese, and salad

toast until the light turns green or a little longer if your cheese was sliced thickly like ours. I even flipped the panini over once because even though both sides should heat evenly, it felt like the top was heating faster than the bottom either that or the cheese was closer to one bread slice than the other and thus absorbed less heat from one side.

take the sandwich off the press, spread guacamole, add tomatoes and sprouts

 

 and serve with apple chips and apple juice for a quick, healthy, delicious lunch. YUMS!

PRICING AND OVERALL THOUGHTS: Our trip to Safeway cost $26 total. We made a total of 11 paninis spread across 3 meals which works out to be $2.36 per sandwich. I like those numbers. You can make so many different types of paninis. We've used dijon mustard before. We've also made ones with grilled bell peppers and spinach. The list goes on. Basically, you make a regular sandwich, and then toast it!

Happy New Year to all. I will be kickin back doing nothing. What will yudu?