In your time here on the planet Earth there are many things that you probably want to do. I don’t blame you for wanting to see the Grand Canyon, visit a foreign country, and receive a high score on an original Pacman arcade game, but there is something that we all should at least attempt to do before the great lizard in the sky beams us up into his cocoon and sends us into the farthest reaches of the netherverse (the netherverse being the void between realities), or you just take a dirt nap. That thing is making the perfect grilled cheese sandwich.
Now, I know what you’re thinking, “There’s already a perfect grilled cheese sandwich.” To this, I say no. No. No, no, no, no, no. There is none. There just isn’t. Some may say, “Oh, you’re just being picky,” or, “I’m lactose intolerant.” All terrible excuses. Added to this, your mom’s grilled cheese is not the best ever. I’ve had it, it was bad. She thinks that adding “love” is going to make it good? Wrong! “Love” is not a seasoning or a spice; it is an abstract concept that barely any of us can truly comprehend.
There are many factors that go into creating this elusive sandwich. Well, there are at least two factors that go into creating this elusive sandwich. Those are cheese and bread. Plain and simple. You don’t need veggies or meat in this concoction. That would just make it a hot sandwich, a thing that you could get at any fast-food restaurant or random street vendor, not the time-tested grilled cheese. Also, as far as I’m concerned, if you add bacon to it, you’ve automatically done it wrong.
There are many types of cheese to choose from, as well as many types of bread, but there has to be some way of getting them together to create a masterpiece. We’ve all tried white bread with American cheese, wheat bread with cheddar, garlic bread with whiz cheese, pita bread with bleu cheese, a doughnut with Swiss, and rye with Munster, but none have been the perfect sandwich. Some believe that they may have gotten close with mozzarella and pumpernickel, but they were just fooling themselves, blissfully fooling themselves.
This article is not a guide to creating the perfect grilled cheese, it’s a wake-up call. We need to understand that it may never happen, and that we may just be wasting our lives going through all the turmoil of trying to generate a piece of food so fantastic that it will have us falling on our knees and praying to the big lizard in the sky, but that has not yet happened. When it finally does, our children, our children’s children, and our children’s children’s children will have created it, or they will not care at all about the plight of this generation.
Please, give us some feedback. This plight on humanity has gone on long enough. Let us know that you are trying to create a sandwich just like we are. Even if it ends up being the worst item we have ever had the misfortune of putting into our mouths, we want to know. The future of the grilled cheese is in our hands, and we cannot let it down.
-Norm Steinmetz, Contributor