• Grilled cheese - without the bread.
• How to make corn salad (video).
• Behind the scenes of the American Cheese Society conference.
• Should Sheryl buy a vacuum sealer for her fruits and fish?
• Tonight we're gonna party like it's 1959.
• This week's recipes: Mediterranean Chicken and Orzo Salad, Spicy Gazpacho, New Potatoes with Capers and Basil, Crab and Avocado Verrine, and Buttery Almond Crisps.

Ah, the grilled cheese sandwich. Everyone takes it for granted. Get a couple of slices of bread and a few slices of cheese and you have yourself a meal. Maybe throw in a bowl of soup with it. But the grilled cheese is actually one of the more versatile sandwiches you can make. I often add tomato to mine, or mix up the type of cheese I use. I often toast the bread too (healthier).

AOL Food has a gallery of various grilled cheese recipes for you to try, including a Buttery Fig and Blue Cheese Melt, a Dutch Grilled Cheese (which includes onions, cumin, Gouda, and caraway), a Smoky Southwestern Grill (which includes mozzarella, goat cheese, and tomato on Italian Bread, and The Best Grilled Cheese, with cheddar cheese on sourdough bread. There are eight sandwiches in all.

Well, to think we forgot to mention that April is National Grilled Cheese Sandwich Month! While I doubt I could actually make and eat a grilled cheese sandwich every day for the 30 days of April to "celebrate," I'll probably do a couple and post them here later this week. But until then, we'll have to make do with the Top Eight Grilled Cheese Sandwiches in New York, as selected by Grub Street. And don't think they're all fancy schmancy paninis or Thomas Keller's at Bouchon Bakery. There's a diner in there that's got some Kraft going, too.

And when I see "we" I'd like to make sure you know I mean other people.

People have been seeing images of Jesus and The Virgin Mary in a lot of food the past several years. We had those grilled cheese sandwiches, someone had some chocolate with a holy image on it, someone else had a cinnamon bun, and I think that someone even had a greasy pan that had a holy figure on the bottom of it. And this is on top of images that have been seen in non-food places, like windows and pieces of wood.

In this L.A. Times piece, we learn that the phenomenon is called "pareidolia," which is the perception of patterns where none are intended. Professor Steve Guthrie says it's a survival instinct, and the way that humans are hard-wired. Of course, this all means nothing to true believers, but it's an interesting article nonetheless, especially during this Christmas season.

I went through a phase in adolescence, where I wouldn't eat grilled cheese sandwiches. It was kids' food and I was a grown up -- wasn't I? But at some point these simple sandwiches became a nostalgic comfort food, and these days I've learned how to dress them up to match my most grown up tastes. Some keys I've found to making the perfect grilled cheese....

• Just say NO to the microwave! Yes, I know -- it's the fastest way to make them, but it just doesn't have the same crisp a pan-fried grilled cheese does.
• You've turned away from the microwave -- now turn away from the toaster. Toasting your bread in a pan or on a griddle with a bit of oil or butter makes the perfect crispy-on-the-outside, soft-and-warm-on-the-inside toast as the foundation for your perfect sandwich.
• A grilled cheese doesn't have to start with plain white bread. Pick your favorite type (I personally think sourdough makes the best grilled cheese base) and start toasting. And, yes, as soon as you turn your back on the bread, it's likely to burn.

We love grilled cheese here at Slashfood, but we understand that not everyone has the money or the space for a big panini press to make fancy grilled cheese sandwiches. Heck, if you're a college student, you might not even have a stovetop to do it in a pan. Well, if you're in a pinch, SouthPhillyBlocks has a photo essay on how to make a grilled cheese sandwich with an iron. Not a cast iron skillet, but a clothes iron. Like the kind you use to press your shirts.

Using the iron is not a new idea, but SouthPhillyBlocks isn't just the photo tutorial. They treated it like an experiment, and found that the Wool setting is the best one to make a grilled cheese.

The rayon setting, however, didn't work as well.

A new competitive eating world record was set over the weekend when eater Joey Chestnut out-ate the competition by eating 49 grilled cheese sandwiches in 10 minutes. Sonya Thomas and Pat Bertoletti tied for second place with 37 sandwiches each. All three passed the former record of 36.5 sandwiches.

There is a video available here of the event, which was held at the Arena Football Fan Fest in Las Vegas. It is a fascinating sight - if mildly disgusting - for anyone who has never witnessed a professional eating competition. The crown cheers on the eaters while they battle the sandwiches, which an announcer describes as being glue-like. Sonya, who weighs 105 pounds, really has her technique down to a science and Chestnut, in a post match interview, describes how much concentration is needed to compete, given that your body doesn't really want to eat all that grilled cheese.

Obviously, a headline like that requires a little explanation. Here goes: 11 years ago, Diana Duyser (right) of Ft. Lauderdale made a grilled cheese sandwich and, upon taking her first bite, noticed what she said was a likeness of the Virgin Mary burned into the bread. She quickly put the rest of the sandwich in a plastic container padded with cotton for safe keeping in her freezer. Two years ago, Duyser put the sandwich on eBay, where internet casino and exemplar of good taste GoldenPalace.com snatched it up for $28,000, as well as the frying pan that birthed it, for another $6,000. The holy sandwich has since brought plenty of notoriety to Duyser (as well as Golden Palace), getting her back stage at a Hall and Oates show and elevating her to saint-like status among some South Floridians. Duyser recently had the sandwich tattooed on her chest to "keep it close to her heart," the Miami Herald reported. The Herald page also has a link to local video coverage of the story.

Wikis, if you're not familiar with them, are online pages that anyone can edit. This leads to comprehensive definitions on just about any subject from applications like the Wikipedia. For a recipe, this means that all the collective knowledge of cooks can be added in to one central location. Does it make the perfect recipe? The directions for making a grilled cheese sandwich at WikiHow look pretty clear and even though the instructions are simple, keep in mind that every great chef (and hungry cook) must start somewhere. If the stove top method is too conventional, you can also try using a George Foreman grill or an iron.

Speaking of grilled cheese, here are a few facts to tide you over while you wait for your sandwich to be done:

• Americans make 2.2 billion grilled cheese sandwiches at home each year.
• The most popular two cheeses for grilled cheese are cheddar and American, though Gouda, Swiss and Gruyere are also quite popular, especially in Europe.
• 30% of Americans name the grilled cheese as their favorite homemade sandwich
• Grilled cheese often has add-ins and the most common is tomato, followed by bacon/ham, potato chips and pickles, while other variations include the French croque-monsieur and croque-madame.

My version of a grilled cheese sandwich is inspired by the city where I lived up until a year ago—San Francisco, and the city where I live now—Portland, Oregon. It includes two of my favorite ingredients, raw milk blue cheese and figs. I particularly love Pt. Reyes blue for its "zingy," salty, sharpness that is instantly mellowed by its creaminess. Pt. Reyes is north of San Francisco overlooking the Pacific Ocean in western Sonoma county. Holstein cows graze in foggy pastures next to the salty Pacific, and you can certainly taste that in the cheese. Fritz Maytag of Maytag blue cheese fame (and Anchor Steam beer and Junipero gin fame. Oh, and washing machine fame, of course!) once told me that his former cheesemaker now crafts Pt. Reyes blue, so if you love Maytag blue (and I do) you might try Pt. Reyes blue cheese as a comparison.

I have blogged before about my love of fruit with savory things, so when I thought about what I wanted to do for a grilled cheese sandwich, I knew it would include some kind of fruit. At first I thought of doing a sandwich with some kind of aged cheese (like goat gouda) and thinly sliced tart apples. But in the end, my fig tree provided the inspiration. It's fig season, and here in Portland, trees are bursting and farmer's markets are exploding with different varieties. I chose the "Brown Turkey" variety of fig for my sandwich because of its lovely color and because they were so fat and fleshy that they were splitting open. I love that about a fig. So without further ado, allow me to present my San Francisco-Portland-inspired grilled cheese sandwich: