There’s a story about this thumbnail.

I am a smiley-faced grilled cheese. Yup, that’s me.

About five years ago, I made a grilled cheese in the toaster oven. Up until that point, I’d always made all my grilled cheeses in the toaster oven.

I can see my wife’s eyes rolling right now. For two reasons:

1. This already sounds like a great story. /S

And,

2. Everyone knows that making grilled cheese in a toaster oven is pathetic, or at best, utilitarian. Especially when the other way to make it, steeping it in butter and frying it up in a pan, is a delicacy.

Well then, perhaps that more delicious way should be called fried cheese? or fried grilled cheese? or for those afraid of the word “frying,” how about sautéed cheese? But if we were to adopt that naming discipline, I assume I’d have to call my way, toaster-ovened cheese and that simply doesn’t inspire the way the words “grilled” and “cheese” do when combined and rolling off the tongue. But I digress.

Anyway, five years ago, I popped this bad boy out of my toaster oven. I hadn’t seen it coming. I don’t think it did, either.

But I looked down at it. And it looked up at me. And we smiled at each other. So I snapped this photo. And then I ate it.

I’m launching a personal branding website soon, aptly named briangoldrich.com — bet you can’t guess how I came up with the name — and one of the pages asks me to tell the world (it’s a template, I won’t lie) Who I Am.

You are what you eat. Therefore, I’m a smiley-faced grilled cheese. And I like that.