Enlarge NPR

Love it to bits, people.

NPR

Love it to bits, people.

We had it on good authority that McDonald's would blend a Hot Apple Pie into a McFlurry, if you asked them to. We sent our intern Kate to order one (this way no senior staff would be hurt in the event the combination was combustible). Our local McD's wouldn't do it — when your local McDonald's is more concerned about your personal welfare than you are, watch out — so we bought the components and made our own.

Spoiler alert: it was amazing.

Robert: This is just like Mom's Apple Pie a la mode, if your mom is too drunk to get the separate ingredients onto the plate.

Eva: Yeah. Until now the only thing stopping me from eating more apple pie was I had to chew it.

Enlarge NPR

Hot Dog Super Bowl.

NPR

Hot Dog Super Bowl.

Next weekend, the New York Giants meet the New England Patriots in the Super Bowl. Here with a simulation match-up are the hot dog representatives from each team. First up: the Boston Dog. Wikipedia tells us:

Hot dogs in the Boston area are associated with Boston baked beans, though this is probably not unique to the region.

We cited that because we have no idea if it's actually true. Anyway, ours has bacon too. Representing New York, a traditional sauerkraut and mustard dirty water dog.

Ian: Technically the Giants play in New Jersey so it should be sauerkraut and mustard and hairspray.

Peter: The New Jersey hot dog is made entirely out of abdominal muscles.

From our "How To Do Everything" podcast:

How does a bad joke get into the State of the Union address? James Fallows, national correspondent for The Atlantic and former chief speechwriter for President Jimmy Carter, says there's only one way a joke like that gets in the speech:

The President must have wanted it to be there. [There are] an infinity of policy checks in the year before the State of the Union, but then the jokes have their own separate cadre of Hollywood experts. I can't imagine any Borscht Belt comedian or aspiring speechwriting talent who would try to push this joke on the President, unless President Obama either for high art reasons or low comedy reasons wanted to go with it.

Um, high art?

A year ago in his State of the Union speech, he had a similarly groan-out-loud joke about salmon. And so it's possible that he's doing a kind of performance art post-modern thing of, with a straight face, delivering one terrible joke per State of the Union address...I choose to think it was sort of a surrealist, absurdist moment, that he enjoyed the Simpsons-esque absurdity of it, as opposed to thinking it was funny.

Mr. Obama: The Andy Kaufman President.

Enlarge NPR

The Twinkie Wiener Sandwich.

NPR

The Twinkie Wiener Sandwich.

In honor of Hostess declaring bankruptcy, this week we're eating a sandwich that is also morally bankrupt: The Twinkie Hot Dog. Turn the Twinkie upside down, slice it like a bun, slide a hot dog in there, and act as if you've done nothing wrong.

Robert: Is this like a pig in a blanket?

Mike: Nope. This is a pig in a fat suit.

George Marks/Getty Images

This stock photo is cross-listed under "headache" and "amazing hair."

From our How To Do Everything podcast:

If you've ever inhaled a slurpee too fast, you're likely familiar with sphenopalatine ganglioneuralgia, which is another word for "ice cream headache," as well as an extremely impressive Scrabble play. Chicago pediatrician Dr. Peter Lechman told us why it happens:

The roof of your mouth gets cold, which causes immediate constriction of the blood vessels. As soon as those blood vessels constrict, your body reacts by trying to dilate them very quickly in order to get more warm blood to the area and heat it up. Pain receptors in the roof of your mouth send a message up to your brain telling you you've got something bad going on in the roof of your mouth. And it causes you to experience an intense headache in your forehead.

So, is an ice cream headache your body's way of protecting you from some terrible ice-cream-in-your-mouth-related mortal danger? Says Lechman:

No. [Your brain] is overreacting.

Assuming the occasional ice cream headache is an inevitability, how do you get rid of it? At this point, Dr. Lechman starts sounding a lot less like a medical professional.

Get the ice cream out of your cakehole, and drink a warm liquid or put your tongue at the roof of your mouth to heat up the area.

Problem solved. Go forth and enjoy that mid-January Choco Taco with gusto.

Enlarge NPR

Yup, those are waffles.

NPR

Yup, those are waffles.

Don't show up to watch the BCS Championship Game tonight — or the Super Bowl in a few weeks — with your patented 7-layer bean dip. Odds are somebody else is going to show up with 8-layer dip, and you're going to look like a fool. Here's a recipe to make sure you win the Dip Arms Race.

32-Layer Bean Dip

Ingredients:

1 can refried beans

1 red onion

1 tomato

1 avocado

1 Hot Pocket

"Wait, Wait" debuts on TV this Friday, December 23rd at 8/7c on BBC America. We were hoping our trailer would begin "In a world..." but this is pretty good too.

LEON NEAL/AFP/Getty Images

Sandwich Claus.

Various members of the Sandwich Monday team will be on vacation over the next couple weeks, so we're taking a little break to detox. We'll be back in 2012 assuming we live till then.

1.) A pro-Putin demonstrator at a rally in Moscow was interviewed by the Times and said he had taken to the streets because ...

A) "I just like the way the president looks without his shirt off."
B) "Takin' It To The Streets was not only his favorite Doobie Brothers song; it was also his hobby."
C) "I've looked the man in the eye. I was able to get a sense of his soul."
D) "I don't have a clue why I'm here. It's for television."

2.) The National Transportation Safety Board has recommended a nationwide ban on what?

A) Truck Nutz
B) Using a cellphone, in any way, while driving
C) The Pontiac Aztek
D) That thing where you hold your hand out the window and make little waves

3.) To create some fellowship and good feeling, the United States Senate held its first ever what?

A) Sleepover at Chuck Schumer's
B) Three-legged race
C) Drum circle
D) Secret Santa gift exchange

Enlarge BBC America

Needs more eyeliner.

BBC America

Needs more eyeliner.

[Ed. note: Our big TV special airs Friday December 23^rd at 8/7c on BBC America. This is Peter's account of turning our radio show into TV.]

"When you're done tonight, find me," said Rebecca. "Otherwise you'll never get this stuff off."

Makeup artists are almost always attractive women; I'm not sure why this is, except the subliminal advertising it offers: "if you let me do my magic upon you, you can be as hot as I am." Rebecca, is, indeed, a very attractive and professional make-up artist, but I took in her vast array of creams, unguents, and tools spread across her work table, and thought that for her, I might be a face too far. Maybe she agreed. She took another look at me, and squeezed something like looked like liquid cement onto a cream base.

"It's a mixture I came up with myself," she said. "For circumstances like this."

Enlarge NPR

The Hot Brown.

NPR

The Hot Brown.

Often when people tell you to eat the local specialty, you go in and it's just you and a bunch of other tourists ordering it. Not so with Kentucky's "Hot Brown." Every table at Ramsey's in Lexington had at least one on it. One table had five, and that table later collapsed, injuring several diners.

A Hot Brown is an open-faced turkey sandwich, piled high with tomato, Mornay sauce, a cheese crust and a couple strips of bacon.

Mike: This is an open-faced sandwich that just barfed.

Ian: Guys, I think I just ate some plate.

SteveR/Flickr Creative Commons

Marmite on crumpet.

Of all the horrible things we've eaten on Sandwich Mondays, it's been something of a surprise to see the controversy surrounding yesterday's Marmite Sandwich post. As a half-British person, who grew up partly in London and loves food born of a time when fruits and vegetables were an exotic foreign novelty, I agree with your primary complaints: we used too much, we didn't toast the bread first, and we should have used butter too.

But, I served the Marmite the way I did because:

1) I wanted my coworkers to get a full, pure, intense Marmite experience. Why miss an opportunity to repulse and horrify them?

2) We work on the fourth floor and the toaster is all the way down on the second floor.

Anyway, after reading your many comments, Peter decided to try it again according to custom. His reaction:

I found it quite tasty, the usual bland fatty sweetness of buttered toast made much more interesting by the salty death taste of the Marmite. It made it better in exactly the same way that knowledge of our own mortality makes each day more precious.

Ian also tried again:

After many of you noted that we should use less, I went all the way, and used none. It WAS much better.

One more thing: for anyone wishing to experiment further in the world of Marmite, I recommend Twiglets - a cracker type snack that tastes like Marmite and is meant to look like a twig. A TWIG.