Last night we had a special Wednesday edition of FoodLab. Lauren has a Thanksgiving potluck lunch at work on Friday and everyone has been asked to bring a side dish. So she thought this would be a good chance to make Delilah's 7 Cheese Mac & Cheese from Throwdown with Bobby Flay.

The recipe:

• 2 pounds elbow macaroni
• 12 eggs
• 1 cup cubed Velveeta cheese
• 1/2 pound (2 sticks) butter, melted
• 6 cups half-and-half, divided
• 4 cups grated sharp yellow Cheddar, divided
• 2 cups grated extra-sharp white Cheddar
• 1 1/2 cups grated mozzarella
• 1 cup grated Asiago
• 1 cup grated Gruyere
• 1 cup grated Monterey Jack
• 1 cup grated Muenster
• 1/8 teaspoon salt
• 1 tablespoon black pepper

The first thing we did was head to grocery store to check out these cheeses. Its a good thing I wasn't buying, because cheese is expensive. Gruyere is $8 a block. Block Asiago cheese is almost $6. Extra-sharp white cheddar was $5. You can see how this is going to turn out, and so could we. So we dumped the Gruyere, found store brand block cheese at 3-for-$5 for the sharp cheddar and monterey (pepperjack), found a small block of Muesnter for less than $4, used a bag of shredded mozzarella rather than the block. The only truly expensive cheeses we needed were the Asiago and Extra-Sharp White Cheddar.

Next we halved all of the ingredients because this was supposed to be dinner for two. In addition to that we figured out that we didn't want an egg souffle, so we used a quarter of the 12 eggs to make our half batch. Lastly we used milk instead of half-and-half, because we're not gross.

Half of that recipe filled a 13x9 baking dish to the hilt. It seemed as though it was going to be a little runny, but after baking it for an hour, the eggs did their job and firmed everything right up. In fact one more egg would have been too dry, and I probably would preferred a little more creamy balance in the cheese. So we probably need to adjust the milk or butter. I would never use 12 eggs for this recipe unless you'd rather end up with some kind of weird scrambled egg macaroni bake for dinner and breakfast. What it comes down to is that if you're used to eating Velveeta shells and cheese, this recipe isn't going to deliver a high-end version of that. This mac and cheese is more of a casserole you cut with a fork. In terms of price, if you make the original recipe you're going to end up with a $50 mac & cheese that serves 15-20 people. If you halve the recipe and catch a break on some sales, you can get two $16-20 meals that will feed a large and hungry family.

The half recipe make more than enough to feed 6 adults. I was disappointed and disgusted to see how much mac & cheese we had left last night. I'll enjoy it for lunch today and then swear off mac & cheese for a few months. This recipe is pretty good, but I can easily see why Delilah lost the Throwdown.