Sandwich Monday: Grilled Cheese With Mac N' Cheese

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The Mac.

The Mac.

We live in an age of great marriages: William and Kate, Kim and Kanye (oh, wait, she's still married to this guy), Kim and The Next One. Best of all, though, is "The Mac" from Cheesie's, in Chicago. The sandwich weds a classic Grilled Cheese with Mac N' Cheese, in one easy to absorb package.

Ian: I honestly feel like we're five years away from never again having to use the word "or" in America.

Robert: If they added a layer of animal crackers and poured on chocolate milk they'd have every preschool lunch I ever had.

Mike: Finally, I can enjoy mac n' cheese without getting my hands all gooey.

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A look within.

A look within.

Mike: It looks like the grilled cheese sandwich is infested.

Ian: I like that it has a grilled cheese and mac n' cheese in there, but Samsung makes a sandwich that also has an MP3 player and an 8-megapixel camera.

Robert: I think this is the sandwich I saw on a wanted poster in Dr. Atkins' office.

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Fear. Delicious fear.

Fear. Delicious fear.

Miles: Should I be nervous that I'm sweating cheese sauce?

Ian: The only cheesier sandwich I've had is the I-Believe-The-Children-Are-The-Future-wich.

Eva: I love mac n' cheese with bread crumbs sprinkled on the top. I think someone read the recipe wrong here.

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Robert tastes poetry for the first time.

Robert tastes poetry for the first time.

Ian: I'm going to feel bad if this isn't a recipe, but a helpless sandwich who'd just fattened up on mac n' cheese to try and survive the winter.

Miles: This may seem like too much to eat at first, but the leftovers prove to be a wonderful makeshift pillow as you slide into a food coma.

[The verdict: delicious. Some complained the texture was too soft. It could benefit from a little crunch, something that could be easily accomplished by just battering and deep frying it.]

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Lasagna Cupcakes, Anyone? Science Says We Can't Get Enough Mini Stuff

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  Cupcakes or just mac 'n cheese baked in a muffin tin?

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  Courtesy of Lisa S. Kim
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  Grilled cheese cupcakes ready for consumption. At our cupcake cook off, we stuffed these minis with Havarti cheese, roasted tomatoes and fresh basil.

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  Courtesy of Lisa S. Kim
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  Bubbling chicken potpie cupcakes, fresh out of the oven. Crescent roll dough creates a shell for the chicken filling.

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  Courtesy of @LisaSKim
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  The Thanksgiving cupcake looks the most like your run-of-the-mill sweet cupcake. The recipe was created on the spot at our cupcake cook off: Biscuit dough is topped with stuffing, turkey and a crown of mashed potatoes.

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  Courtesy of Lisa S. Kim
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  Five savory cupcakes: Chicken potpie, lasagna, grilled cheese, macaroni and cheese, and Thanksgiving leftovers.

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  Courtesy of Lisa S. Kim

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A few weeks ago, my friend came back from Brooklyn raving about the food served at a baby shower.

"Savory cupcakes!" she exclaimed. Lasagna, grilled cheese, chicken potpies and even a mac n' cheese cupcake all shaped like the trendy dessert and served on a cupcake tree.

Despite all the enthusiasm, my first response was quite cynical. Isn't that just baked macaroni and cheese in a muffin tin?

The idea came from Pinterest, where you can find recipes for taco cupcakes, mini caprese sandwiches and baby meatloafs "frosted" with mashed potatoes.

Seriously, why are Americans so fascinated with miniaturized foods? Was this simply the next installment of the cupcake trend, or did savory cupcakes speak more deeply about Americans' need to individualize everything?

Alice Julier, director of food studies at Chatham University, says she doesn't buy the individualism argument. The desire to shrink beloved dishes into individual servings pervades the global gastronomical landscape, she says. Think about tapas, dim sum or the Bento Box.

"The Japanese have been doing it with food forever," she says. And, they take miniaturization and individualism to extreme. They sell individually wrapped strawberries and even have toy kitchens where you can prepare dime-sized doughnuts and one-inch pizzas with micro-utensils and Lilliputian cookware. (These nano-foods are made of seaweed extract, but they're not edible).

Making savory cupcakes brings creative, fun to the kitchen.

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Making savory cupcakes brings creative, fun to the kitchen.

Why shouldn't we Americans jump into the trend and miniaturize our favorites, like grilled cheese and lasagna?

These home-spun versions of molecular gastronomy where food is deconstructed and then put back together adds "a creative fun play to cooking that people don't get to do in their regular day," Julier thinks. And it brings us closer to our food. "Americans now feel a disconnect with their food. This gives us some control of foods' shape and form."

This all sounds reasonable, but it still doesn't explain the emotional response many of us have when we see a pee-wee pizza or bite-size lasagna. "Omigosh, look how adorable!"

Writing in The New York Times a few years ago, Natalie Angier called this "The Cute Factor." She said that humans are hardcoded to respond positively to any features or signs that reminds us of needy infants, from "the young of virtually every mammalian species, fuzzy-headed birds like Japanese cranes, woolly bear caterpillars, a bobbing balloon, a big round rock stacked on a smaller rock, a colon, a hyphen and a close parethesis typed in succession."

If punctuation can emanate "cute cues" that make us happy and trigger our impulse to nuture and care, then surely miniaturized food may elicit a similar response.

This foodie-scientist needed some solid data. So I suggested my friend come down to Washington, D.C. and bake up a few batches of these baby casseroles.

As soon as the bubbling mini-potpies came out of the oven, my skepticism and pedantic analyses turned to child-like glee.

Cute little discs of brioche brushed with butter of course served as the bread for the grilled cheese cupcakes. And, a thick bechamel sauce was rich enough that the mac n' cheese cupcakes held their shape as they cooled. Oh, how delightful!

But what finally won me over were the lasagna cupcakes. Wonton noodles replaced the pasta, and the thin noodles folded up along the sides of the cupcakes, sealing in the ricotta cheese and tomato sauce. Dare I say they were better than the large format?

Whether it's an instinctual affection for baby Japanese birds or just a desire to connect more closely to your dinner, the mini-food movement appears to be kicking in the U.S.

And, it's probably no coincidence, Julier says, that we are choosing to miniaturize calorie-rich dishes, like lasagna and meat pies. "It allows an indulgence without the guilt."

Cute and healthy all wrapped up together in a muffin. What more does a foodie need.

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Sandwich Monday: The Grilled Cheese Doughnut

The Gronut.

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The Gronut.

Celebrity couples always get our attention: Kim & Kanye, Brangelina, Gosling & Totenberg. The Grilled Cheese Doughnut is just such a pairing: Two titans together as one. We'll call it Gronut.

A cross section.

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A cross section.

Take a glazed doughnut, slice it open, flip both halves around so they're cut-side out, slap on some cheese, and grill it in butter. We think Ohio's Tom & Chee Restaurant did it first, and we're guessing they did a better job than we did.

Ian: Ew. I think the proper pronunciation here is "grilled cheese DO NOT."

Blythe: It's a panono.

Eva: Doughnuts are so versatile! No bread? Make a doughnut grilled cheese! No milk? Pour donuts on your cereal!

Ian: What could be more American than this? If they really want to look like men of the people, I think President Obama and Governor Romney should wear these on their lapels tonight.

Leah: It's nice to think that all the cheese in my arteries will have a flotation device.

In process.

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In process.

Ian: Looking through the doughnut hole is like looking through a little window to the inside of me. It's all melted cheese in there, too.

Blythe: This Kraft Single is more like Kraft Single-with-seven-cats.

Eva: A word of warning: do not dunk this in coffee.

Robert: Goes great with the insulinccino though.

[The verdict: it's possible we made an error using American cheese, but this wasn't very good. We'll keep trying until we get it right, or at least until we have to buy new pants.]

Robert does not approve.

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Robert does not approve.

Sandwich Monday is a regular feature from the staff of "Wait, Wait...Don't Tell Me..." Sandwich Monday has no nutritional or educational value whatsoever, may cause heartburn, and it's possible that reading it will make your eyes fat.

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