Today is an exciting day, everyone! Today is the first Recipe Challenge! You probably recall that about a week or so ago, I made a little post asking how you make a grilled cheese sandwich. Little did I know that in actuality, I was throwing down the gauntlet!
In short order, Skeet responded with our very first recipe challenge. The order? One grilled cheese sandwich plus bacon, minus the Miracle Whip. The thought of relegating the Miracle Whip to the refrigerator makes your chef very sad, but I made a deal. So I made a pilgrimage to the grocery store to obtain the necessary ingredients: bread, butter, cheese and bacon. After experiencing a few delays, I finally got the chance to test Skeet’s recipe today. Of course, I had to take pictures to prove I was making the sandwich to her strict specifications.

First, I buttered my bread:

Then I put one slice, butter side down, in a heated skillet and added half my cheese, and my bacon:

Then, I added the rest of the cheese, smooshed my sandwich together, and cooked it until it was browned on both sides, and all gooey in the middle. As you can see, I’m got a little overzealous in the smooshing part:

The Verdict:
It was alright. I’ll definitely consider using shredded cheese on my next grilled cheese because it was deliciously gooey. Unfortunately, my bacon was slightly overcooked, so I had to deal with a slight burnt taste. In the end, I think the only thing this sandwich was sorely missing was … MIRACLE WHIP.

And I have to confess, I didn’t quite make it. After several bites, I caved, and fished some good ole M.W. from the fridge to dunk my sandwich in. Sorry, Skeet, I tried! You just can’t have a grilled cheese without some Miracle Whip!

It was brought to my attention today that my Recipe Challenge submission page wasn’t working. And here I was getting a complex that no one wanted to share their recipes with me!! I’m working on a fix for that, but in the meantime, I’ve activated the normal comments field on that page. You can submit recipes to me that way, or you can go ahead and email them to me at jenn{at}jenncooks.com.

I know I haven’t really had much to put over here lately, but I haven’t been cooking either! I’ve bought lunch at work every day this week, and I’ve either gotten dinner out (mmm… Subway…) or mooched food off of family pretty much every night. I haven’t gone to renew my license plates yet, so I don’t know how much/if I have money for grocery shopping. There were some things that I really wanted out of this week’s grocery ad, so hopefully I have at least a little bit of money to go to the store with.

Don’t worry though, I’ve still been looking for ideas, and things to make. Definitely speaks to being a fat kid that most of the recipes that jump out at me are desserts! Don’t forget, I’m accepting recipes from you guys in the Recipe Challenge.