Goat Cheese and Sundried Tomato Panini

Last Thursday, I had a long workout session planned with a pal and I knew that I wouldn't feel up to cooking much for dinner.  Luckily, I had a huge container of leftover Rustic Slow Cooker Tomato Lentil and Chicken Sausage Soup in the freezer.  I love making large slow cooker meals and freezing them because they come in handy for lazy evenings such as this.

Although the soup is hearty on its own, I wanted to make a simple sandwich to go with my tomato lentil and chicken sausage soup.  Since I had some leftover goat cheese from my goat cheese and pea tendril stuffed pork chops, I wanted to find a recipe that would incorporate goat cheese.  I happily found myself at Panini Happy, which is a food blog all about - you guessed it, paninis!  Here, I found a very simple recipe for an open-faced goat cheese and sundried tomato panini.

Since B and I don't eat bread very often, whenever we buy a loaf of bread, we usually will freeze it after we've had a few slices.  On Thursday night, I found that we had some rustic country whole grain bread on hand in our freezer.  We smeared goat cheese on the bread, along with some chopped sundried tomatoes (from Whole Foods' antipasto bar).  Since our goat cheese came in a Provencal marinade, it was full of delicious herb flavors.  We used the olive oil of the Provencal marinade as the fat to help press our paninis golden brown on our grill pan and cast iron skillet (in lieu of a panini press).

While ours was a close-faced sandwich, it was definitely great to use Kathy's recipe.  The tangy goat cheese definitely helped to cut down the richness of the thick and hearty soup.

What food blogs do you turn to for inspiration when cooking something new?