Grown-Up Grilled Cheese

It's so hard to eat well (delicious, reasonably healthy meals where you don't have to pay through the nose) in college. Especially when your cafeteria serves food that a dog would hesitate to eat. (Seriously, I swear my scrambled eggs bounced the other day.)

And Hayley has this wonderful board on Pinterest full of recipes that make your mouth water. Most of them have cheap ingredients, but they make so much food! Way too much for just one person! So we're banding together to try out her recipes. We're going to work our way through her boards, through our family recipes, through everything we can find. We're going to learn couponing (gulp) and pass on what we learn to you, our readers.

Tonight's recipe? Grilled mac-and-cheese sandwiches.

Yeah, you heard me. Ooey gooey mac-and-cheese between two pieces of bread. When we saw this recipe, oh my goodness there were some excited college girls in our apartment. If it had mashed potatoes in it too, it would be the ultimate comfort food.

(Maybe we can work on that one of these days. Baby steps, baby steps.)

So here's how it works:

Ingredients:
Mac-and-cheese (about 1/4 cup per sandwich)
Bread, any kind (2 pieces per sandwich, obviously)
Butter (not much, like 1tbsp or something)
Salt and pepper
Any add-ins? (I'm a huge fan of Polish sausage and some diced onion in my mac, but Hayley thinks I'm weird - you can make up your own mind)

Method:
Make your mac. We used Velveeta Shells, but you can use any kind you want, including homemade.

Butter your bread. One side only, y'all, or your mac will slip around.

Bread goes butter-side-down on the hot skillet. This is the grilled cheese part, so if you know how to make grilled cheese, you know what's coming next.

Spread your mac on the bread, add some salt and pepper, and top with the other piece of bread, butter-side-out. Once the bottom's nice and brown, flip it.

Feel free to shout "Noodle down!" if you drop some. God knows we did.

Once both sides are deliciously brown and buttery, get that baby on a plate.

Oh yeah. Look at that perfect sandwich. Look at how gorgeous it is. Almost too good to eat.

Except that not eating it would be a tragedy because this is the best grilled cheese sandwich I've ever had.

Serve with sparkling grape juice (as we did) or your favorite fizzy beverage, juice, etc. And seriously, enjoy. (It won't be a struggle, we promise.)