The Inadvertent Gardener » Food

The Edible Movie: Best Picture Dinners

inadvertentgardener — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 16:59:52 +0000

Though I know I promised I’d profile a movie each month as part of my The Edible Movie series, I’m going to already take a time out from that structure to tell you about something slightly different.

Yeah, I know. I’m The Inadvertent Gardener, and I breed inconsistency.

But I want to invite you to share something with me that I’ve been working on since the nominees for the 84th Annual Oscars were announced back in late January: A Best Picture Dinners series on BlogHer Food where I took each nominated film and developed a full dinner menu (appetizer, cocktail, main meal and dessert) inspired by the movie.

On some occasions, it was an assignment that brought me deliciously close to home. On others, it took me painfully close to a day I’d just as soon not spend much time remembering. And, in today’s post, the final in the series, I revisit an incredible weekend in Paris that started with a meal I envisioned at seven, and that my mother made sure I could realize.

Though I know you probably won’t cook all the menus, I encourage you to check them out. It was a joy to assemble them, and it has made me think about all the Best Picture nominees in a different way. I’ll be at the edge of my seat Sunday night, waiting to hear who takes home the statue.

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Roasted fingerling potato salad

inadvertentgardener — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 01:16:23 +0000

The Unicorn has lots of lovable qualities, but among them is this: He is a fantastic giver of gifts.

He is not a fan of the gift list—he’d much rather pay attention to the recipient, think hard about something they would love to have but would never buy for themselves, and then give them that. I don’t know many people who operate like this, and it’s pretty spectacular to be on the receiving end.

This year, that meant he gave me a controller that turns my slow cooker into a sous-vide machine, along with some other accessories perfect for making the sous-vide process easier. Not only would I not have bought one of these, I didn’t even know it existed. How The Unicorn found the dude in Canada who makes these things, I do not know, but he made it happen.

Of course, as I am wont to do, this meant that I let my excitement about my new toy get the better of me. I planned out four recipes, all vegetable-based, to start with in the cooker. None of them required long cooking times, but they did require the water to stay at a pretty hefty temperature.

I could not get the water to stay at that temperature on the first try. I should also mention that the first try lasted about ten hours, while I became more and more freaked out about the amount of raw ingredients I’d just bought for these dishes and how they were going to go to waste. Let it not be said I can’t turn what starts as a fun cooking day into something akin to a panic attack. I have mad skills in this area, folks. Mad skills.

One of the dishes I was going to make was a fingerling potato salad, and when it became obvious that the sous-vide solution was not forthcoming that evening, I varied the recipe to use the oven instead of the slow cooker. The result was outstanding: a bacony, rich dish that rides the line between German potato salad and the American rendition.

Even if it meant I didn’t get to use The Unicorn’s gift for this dish, it yielded a recipe I’ll return to. I hope you will try it, and return to it yourself.

Roasted Fingerling Potato Salad
(Serves 8-10)

3 pounds fingerling potatoes, cleaned and skins left on
2 TBSP olive oil
1 TBSP salt
¼ pound bacon, diced
2 carrots, diced
3 shallots, diced
2 garlic cloves, diced
1 celery stalk, diced
¼ c. homemade mayonnaise (To make this, I recommend following the directions located here, but substitute red wine vinegar for the lemon juice, and leave out the garlic and basil.)
2 TBSP apple cider vinegar
2 TBSP Dijon mustard
2 TBSP chopped parsley
1 TBSP chopped tarragon

Boil the potatoes in heavily salted water until they are just starting to get tender. Meanwhile, preheat your oven to 450 degrees.
Drain the potatoes and let them cool a bit. At this point, if you have a lot of variation in size, cut the larger ones in half, then toss the whole batch into a roasting pan. Drizzle with the olive oil, then toss with the salt. Roast in the oven for about 25-30 minutes, or until the potato skins are crisping and starting to brown.
While the potatoes are roasting, saute the bacon in a pan over medium heat until it begins to crisp and the fat begins to render. Add the carrots, garlic, shallots and celery to the pan and cook approximately five minutes, or until the shallots and garlic become soft.
Remove the potatoes from the oven and place them in a large bowl. Add the onion-garlic-bacon mixture and mix.
In a separate bowl, mix the mayonnaise, vinegar and mustard. Pour that mixture on top of the potato mixture and mix well. Sprinkle the herbs on top and serve immediately.

The annual pomegranate binge

inadvertentgardener — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 01:12:50 +0000

This week, I succumbed in a big way to my annual pomegranate binge. I can’t get enough of the tangy, juicy seeds, which are only in season for the next month or two.

I mostly throw them into salads, but I have been known to stand at the kitchen counter, storage container of harvested seeds in one hand, spoon in the other, and just shovel them straight into my mouth. It’s not every day that one has the opportunity to take an action that is simultaneously so decadent…and so healthy.

For lunch today, for example, I tossed a couple of handfuls of baby spinach leaves with garbanzos I’d cooked earlier in the week, leftover roast chicken, and a shocking number of pomegranate seeds. I drizzled sherry vinegar and really good olive oil over the top, hit the mixture with some sea salt, and even eating at my desk felt extravagant. Every single bite included at least one pomegranate seed, and it was delicious.

Pomegranates can be intimidating. I hadn’t tried to open one before moving to California, but this fruit can totally be conquered. I’ll direct you over to a post I wrote this week for BlogHer, which features not only links to some great, photo-heavy tutorials, and some solid recipe links, too.

The time is short, folks. Get your pomegranate on before the season ends!

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Wintertime Homemade Tomato Soup

inadvertentgardener — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 14:43:43 +0000

I have a love-not-love relationship with soup. Sometimes I would be happy to eat it for days in a row, and sometimes I have no patience for it. Soup, after all, can’t really be eaten quickly. The spoon is a finite vessel: It holds what it holds, and forces the eater to go bite by bite, thoughtfully. Eat too fast, and you’re guaranteed to either splash the soup everywhere or burn your mouth, or both.

I’ll admit that I’ve gotten close to the bottom of many a bowl of soup, have looked around to make sure no one was watching me, then picked it up and slammed it back as if it were a cafe au lait. This is not how I would recommend eating soup, unless, of course, you’re comfortable with the recrimination of your Internal Etiquette Monitor. Ladies don’t drink their soup straight from the bowl.

But when I can muster the patience, and can find within myself the discipline to eat at a more graceful speed than usual, I love soup. Whether it’s turkey soup inspired by my Dad’s recipe, or an easy lentil number, or homemade caldo verde, it’s comforting, and a canvas for so many combinations of delicious and interesting ingredients.

As you probably know from reading this blog, I have a great aversion to out-of-season tomatoes. And though, every year, I get the idea that I’m going to want to can tomatoes, I never get around to it when they’re in season. This year, in particular, that was a hopeless cause—I was so busy I barely even got to the farmer’s market during tomato season. So a few weeks ago, I indulged in a shipment from Happy Girl Kitchen out here in California—several jars of canned heirloom tomatoes and dry-farmed tomatoes that I planned to use for something amazing in the tomato off-season.

I decided, in the midst of a stressful pre-holiday week, that some of those tomatoes were destined for homemade tomato soup. Comforting, bright, and, in my case, a little bit creamy, they would be the perfect burst of Vitamin C and A, served up in a warm and soothing package. Plus, it was a stretch in which I desperately needed to slow down and eat something at the pace it required—see all the above about eating too fast And no patience for soup… Would this option serve as aspoonful of medicine? Yes, but not the kind that requires sugar to go down.

I had some leftover half-and-half on hand from another cooking project, so I stirred some into the soup at serving time, but I know we’re reaching the end of The Season of Excess, and you may be looking for something more ascetic to add to your diet. If so, let me assure you that this would be just fine without any dairy. If you’re in need of a little winter solace, pair it with a grilled cheese, but it’s just as lovely paired with a thick slice of whole grain bread from your local bakery and a salad on the side.

Wintertime Homemade Tomato Soup

(Serves 6-8)

2 TBSP butter
1 TBSP olive oil
1 onion, chopped
1 large carrot, diced
48 oz. canned crushed or diced tomatoes (if you can get local ones, do it. Otherwise, I swear by Muir Glen’s products)
32 oz. chicken or vegetable stock, preferably homemade
1 TBSP chopped fresh thyme
Salt and pepper to taste
(Optional) Half-and-half or heavy cream

Heat a cast-iron dutch oven over medium-high heat. When the pan’s hot, add the butter and olive oil and let sizzle until the butter has melted.
Add the onion and carrot and saute for about five minutes, until the onion is very soft.
Add a hefty pinch of salt to the onion-carrot mix, then the thyme, and stir to combine.
Add the tomatoes (including their juice) and the stock, and stir to combine. Bring the mixture to a strong simmer, and keep it there for about 20 minutes. Taste, and adjust seasonings as needed.
Puree with an immersion blender. You can also puree it in a regular blender, but you’ll need to do it in parts, and be very careful not to burn yourself with hot soup!
Serve immediately. If you want to add half-and-half or heavy cream, you can do so directly to each serving.

Here are some additional tomato soup recipes worth checking out:

My Tomato Soup Revelation from Gastronomie
Punt! Homemade Tomato Soup from The Practical Cook
Homemade Tomato Soup—In Just 20 Minutes! from Saucy Girl’s Kitchen
Homemade Tomato Soup from Local Lemons

Pasta a la Gus, Genie-style

inadvertentgardener — Wed, 03 Aug 2011 14:47:37 +0000

Back when I lived in DC, long before I ever thought about gardening, I spent a fair amount of time running up and down I-95 in the summer to Orioles games. I have a long family history with the team, one too long to get into here, and they will, no matter how long they remain the American League underdogs, always be my very favorite.

Not far from the Orioles’ park, Camden Yards, is Baltimore’s Little Italy, a touristy-kitschy collection of Italian restaurants, bakeries, delis and other businesses that run the gamut from very good to awfully mediocre. But we used to go there sometimes when I was a kid, and between that and multiple viewings of Lady & The Tramp, I’m a sucker for an old-school Southern Italian restaurant with a booming-voiced proprietor, an accordion soundtrack, and candles flickering in bumpy, red glass candleholders. Throw a carnation in a tiny glass vase on the table for good measure, and I’m in heaven.

Either before or after an Orioles game one night, I ended up with a couple of friends at Sabatino’s, which is one of the hoary veterans of Little Italy. While dating my eventual ex-husband, I had become obsessed with Spaghetti Aglio e Olio, the very simple and traditional preparation of spaghetti tossed in heavily-garlic-infused olive oil—there was a place we used to go where I ordered it every time. On this particular night at Sabatino’s, I started looking for that on the menu, but got sidetracked by Spaghetti a la Gus.

Spaghetti a la Gus was described as being served in an olive oil and garlic sauce, but with green and black olives and chilis in the mix as well. I ordered it, fully planning to eat half and save the rest for later, and found myself empty-plated within a shockingly short number of minutes after my plate arrived, then found myself mopping the plate with the bread still on the table. I’m not proud of my total lack of restraint, but I could not help myself.

My intent was to return to Sabatino’s, and to return quickly, for another plate of Spaghetti a la Gus. But things happen, and life moves in a whole bunch of directions, and I never got back there, and then I moved away. But, even six years after I left DC for Iowa (and therefore probably 13 or 14 years after that plate of pasta at Sabatino’s), I still find myself craving it.

Here’s the version I made earlier this summer to satisfy that very craving.

Pasta a la Gus, Genie-style

1 lb. fettucine (can substitute spaghetti or any other substantial long pasta, but I find angel hair to be too delicate)
1/3 c. olive oil
Three cloves of garlic, peeled and whole
½ c. sliced green olives
½ c. sliced black ripe olives (don’t go fancy here – go for the canned kind)
1 c. chopped flat-leaf parsley
½ TBSP crushed red pepper
Kosher salt and freshly ground pepper to taste

Prepare the pasta according to instructions. Cook to al dente and drain.
Heat the olive oil in a small saucepan over medium-high heat. When it’s hot, add the garlic and let cook until light golden brown. This will only take a minute or two, and be sure to watch it so it doesn’t burn.
Remove the garlic from the pan to a cutting board to cool. Add the olives, crushed red pepper and parsley to the oil. (Be careful at this point, because any liquid on the olives or parsley will spatter in the hot oil.) Stir and let cook for a minute or two.
Crush the garlic with the back of a fork, then add it back to the olive oil mixture.
Remove the oil mixture from the heat, toss it with the pasta, give each bowl a hit of salt and pepper, and serve immediately.

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Roasted fava beans

inadvertentgardener — Wed, 25 May 2011 17:07:54 +0000

One of my favorite stands at the Jack London Square Farmers’ Market in Oakland is the Happy Boy Farms stand. That’s where I almost always buy my salad greens, and usually a whole bagful of whatever else they have available at the moment.

Sunday was no exception. I stopped by to get some arugula for salads, and grabbed some adorable eight-ball zucchinis while I was there. I eyed the prodigious pile of fava pods on one table, but thought about my schedule for the week, and saw no windows of opportunity for the slow, meticulous process of prepping the beans. Instead, I grabbed a bundle of mint, and went to check out.

“I would have grabbed some of the favas, but I’ve got no time this week to deal with them,” I told the Happy Boy Farms worker.

“Have you seen our recipe over there?” he replied, nodding in the direction of the pile. “You can roast them, and then just eat them like edamame.”

I walked back to the pile, and indeed, there was a laminated article that featured what looked like the easiest recipe ever. Roasting has become my very favorite way to prep vegetables, but it had never occurred to me it would work with favas.

Indeed, it does. Peeling, blanching, and peeling some more? Only if you’ve really got the time. But if you’re like the rest of us, or you don’t have a sous chef, here’s one way to enjoy these seasonal beans without missing whatever you had scheduled during the season.

There’s not really a recipe needed. Just fire up the oven to 450 degrees, and wash the beans thoroughly.

Toss the beans with olive oil, salt and pepper.

Spread them out in a single layer on a baking stone or sheet.

Roast them for 25 minutes.

Let them cool enough to handle, and then remove the beans. Eat them out of hand, or use them in your favorite fava recipe.

Want to learn more about roasted favas? Try one of these stories:

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Hungry for a Cause: Hunger Challengers Underway for Third Year

inadvertentgardener — Wed, 15 Sep 2010 07:05:06 +0000

Editor’s Note: This post originally appeared Monday on BlogHer, but in case you’re not a BlogHer reader, I wanted to make sure you were aware of this year’s Hunger Challenge effort!

For the third year in a row, the San Francisco Food Bank has launched the Hunger Challenge, a week-long opportunity for bloggers and others to walk in the shoes of America’s hungry. The challenge: Eat for $4 per day per person, the current amount of the food stamp benefit provided to recipients.

Participants this year include veterans of the challenge and those brand new to it. In addition, California Assemblywoman Fiona Ma has joined the roster.

Hannah of Project Open Hand admitted that though the Hunger Challenge will provide a solid education in one facet of being poor in America, she’s working from a place of great advantage:

“As I walk in the shoes of a food stamp recipient, I realize that I will have a hot shower each morning, clean clothes to wear each day, a safe home to return to after a long day work, and a warm bed to sleep in at night. Thus, I will only encounter one of the many hardships endured by the poor every day. However, it is my hope that this experience will help me gain a better understanding of what I call the “food insecurity epidemic” and provide elucidation on ways people like me and you can help to alleviate this societal problem.”

Vinette Gutierrez of Hello Vinette! went slightly over budget during her shopping trip at the beginning of the challenge. “On my list of groceries, I got mostly carbohydrates and starchy items since they were the least expensive,” she said as she embarked on the week.

“I hope I’m not being overly confident and optimistic but I think I can handle this,” said Hello Cupcake. “At the very least, it’s only one week and as it stands now, I am very conscious of my food spending habits.”

Dana of The Food Stamp Diet had already run into a challenge starting on Day 1: she hadn’t gone shopping for her groceries yet, she woke up craving restaurant pancakes that wouldn’t fit in the budget for the week, and her boyfriend gave her a homemade piece of candy that, also, she could not eat while on the challenge.

“I’m not pleased. So now I guess I’m gonna go to maybe Safeway or maybe some fruterias on mission and see what I can get for cheap. I have $28 for the whole week but I’m not sure I’m going to spend it all today because I’m worried I won’t ration properly for the week and then I will run out. I am going to try to have some fruit and veggies this week even though I’m sure that will take all my money.

It’s gonna be a beans and rice kind of week I guess.”

The Day 1 challenge for Kate of Some Dreams Come True and her husband, Mark, was when her in-laws invited them over for dinner.

“One of the challenge rules is no accepting handouts – after all, you could just set up to be at another friend’s house for dinner every night.

But, it got me thinking about what would happen if we were really living on food stamps. Would that be the end of social eating? I really don’t think so. While I really wouldn’t think anything less of anyone using food stamps, I don’t think I’d be advertising it if I was. So, I did what I’d usually do – asked what I could bring.

Mark and I ended up bringing dessert. And, in the spirit of the challenge, I wanted to make something that would fit into our $8/day budget. I ended up whipping up another Strawberry Sour Cream Pie. The total cost for the pie was $5.18.”

Learn more about the program, and check out the full list of participating bloggers, at The Hunger Challenge’s site. It’s not too late to sign up and participate!

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Off to the Pleasure Island of tawdry food…

inadvertentgardener — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 13:41:29 +0000

Editor’s Note: This post appeared earlier this week on BlogHer, but since I’m headed to the Iowa State Fair this weekend, I thought it was most appropriate to point you in its direction.

The first time I visited the Iowa State Fair, I arrived armed with an annotated map.

My friend Leah, whose father is the Executive Director of the Iowa State Fair Foundation, grew up attending the fair. When she heard I was going for the first time in 2006, she told me she had a set of places she liked to go. At her cubicle, she used a marker to identify the best booths and the best food.

“Only the Campbell’s corndogs,” she said. “Look for the blue hats. Don’t eat any other kind. And there are lots of mini donuts, but you want the ones from the church, not the other kind. Also, the cheese curds are the best you will ever have. They’re here,” she said as she put an x marking the spot. “They’re in this triangle near the Agricultural Building.”

Leah did not steer me wrong. Of course, like an amateur, I tried to get through her entire list of food recommendations in my first hour and a half on the grounds. Do you know what happens when you do that? You can’t feel your feet for the next hour. Yes, those of you who are physicians, you SHOULD be alarmed by that symptom.

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Kettle padróns

inadvertentgardener — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 14:25:17 +0000

Last night, Fatemeh assigned me the job of side dishes to go with pork chops. Roasted fingerlings, I decided, and roasted green beans tossed with preserved rangpur lime, because in the Bay Area, summer is so damn chilly and foggy that it’s quite normal to be able to roast up some vegetables a la winter.

While she was off gallivanting around the neighborhood, I pulled the vegetables from the crisper and realized I had some baby padróns that I needed to cook. “I’m making them as an appetizer,” I said when she arrived back at the apartment. I sautéed them up in olive oil, and dumped them in a bowl to add salt.

At this point, Fatemeh was mixing a marinade for the pork. “One of these days,” she said, gesturing at the bag of brown sugar on the counter and then at the peppers, “I want to hit those with that and caramelize them.”

“Do it,” I said. “Now.”

She tossed some brown sugar into the hot pan, and I dumped the blistered padróns back in. “Can I add salt to them?” I asked.

“Of course,” she said, in the tone that finishes the sentence with the implied dumbass.

“Kettle padróns,” I said. “We’re making kettle padróns!”

We made them, and then we ate them. All of them. With our fingers. While standing up at the counter.

“The kettle padróns were gone in under five minutes. We have a problem,” Tweeted Fatemeh. “Either that or a business plan.”

Kettle Padróns
(Serves 1-2, hastily)

1 pint padrón peppers (No need to seed or stem them…)
2 Tbsp olive oil
1 ½ Tbsp brown sugar
½ Tbsp kosher salt or sea salt

Heat the olive oil in a sauté pan over medium-high heat. When the oil is just about to smoke, toss in the padróns. Sauté them until they’re starting to blacken and blister.
Add in the brown sugar and continue stirring for about three or four minutes, until the sugar’s melted and starting to brown.
Transfer the caramelized peppers to a bowl. Add the salt.
Eat the shit out of them. Then email me and Fatemeh and thank us for this discovery.

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Recreating the KFC Double Down, locavore-style

inadvertentgardener — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 12:04:37 +0000

The KFC Double Down might be simple blasphemy, or just a sign that the apocalypse is nigh. Were the Four Horsemen eating Double Downs while they rode into town? Certainly, anyone who eats more than half of one in their lifetime greatly ups their chances of dying before December 2012.

I say this as someone who has, indeed, eaten a Double Down. (I know. I live on the edge like that.) I went on a secret mission, cloaked by half-truths, with another human who will remain unnamed here—it’s fair enough to out myself, but not to out my compatriot—and we tried the damn thing. And it wasn’t terrible, as these things go.

It was certainly too salty. The Colonel’s Special Sauce was both lacking in amount and was functionally tasteless. The “sandwich” looked much less appetizing than the advertisement (which isn’t really saying much). The wan cheese and limp bacon really didn’t offer any respite from the mediocrity.

While we ate our contraband, my compatriot said, “You know, this would be really good with some spinach in the middle,” which led me to comment on the ridiculousness of introducing a vegetable into a “sandwich” where the bread has been replaced with fried chicken, which then led us to discuss how the damn thing could be recreated at home.

I know. You’re sitting there saying, Um, Genie? Why would anyone recreate this at home?

And I retort with this: What if we could avert the apocalypse if we just shopped locally for the ingredients?

Thinking corporately, shopping locally

Here’s what the Double Down comprises:

Two pieces of fried chicken breast (Note: There is a grilled option, but it has more sodium than the fried incarnation, and if you’re eating meat as a bread replacement, why do it in a half-ass manner?);
The Colonel’s Special Sauce;
A slice of Monterey Jack;
A slice of Pepper Jack;
A slice of bacon.

A trip to the Ferry Plaza Farmers’ Market on Saturday morning got me a long way toward all the ingredients on the list. I picked up a half-dozen Rock Island eggs from Petaluma Farms for $1.75, a rasher of Fatted Calf bacon for $9.68, and some aged cheddar from Pt. Reyes Farmstead Cheese Co. for $10. Inside the Ferry Plaza, I bought 750 mL of Stonehouse House Blend olive oil for $18, and stopped at Cowgirl Creamery to see if they had something to sub in for the Pepper Jack.

“I need something that’s preferably local, definitely regional, will sub in for a Pepper Jack in a recipe, and will melt a bit,” I told the cheesemonger, whose face lit up.

“I know just the thing,” she said, and she handed me a taste of Capricorns, a peppercorn-laced cheese from Tumalo Farms in Bend, OR. It might not have been from within a 150-mile radius of my apartment, but it was perfect. I bought a quarter-pound for $7.44.

Please note that, compared to the Double Down, which clocks in at approximately $5.65, depending on where you purchase it, this little trip to market was breaking the bank.

And I had not yet bought the chicken.

A plan, thwarted

I originally planned to go to Bakesale Betty, a local purveyor of some of the best fried chicken sandwiches in the area, to purchase said sandwich ($8.50) and strip the chicken out of it, thereby eliminating any need to actually fry my own chicken for the homegrown Double Down variation. But the new Bakesale Betty location near my office had a soft opening and then closed up shop again right when I had the free night to try this little experiment, so that was the end of that.

Luckily, the Internet knows all, so I located the Bakesale Betty fried chicken sandwich recipe online and figured out what ingredients I needed to make this project a reality.

I hit my favorite butcher, Baron’s Meat & Poultry in Alameda, for a Mary’s Free Range Chicken breast, filleted into two relatively equal-sized pieces. $6.77. And then I went across to the Alameda Natural Grocery to pick up some Clover Stornetta Farms buttermilk ($1.49) and some cayenne pepper for the dredging flour ($2.49).

I got home from work at 6:05 p.m. and turned right around to go to the store. I was home from the shopping trip by 7, which is when I stopped to total up everything I had spent so far in service of this little experiment and came to $57.62. That’s not counting the flour, paprika, salt and pepper I already had at home. Oh. And the half-bottle of canola oil, which is not exactly a trivial ingredient. Right.

I had to sit down just a moment, really, because I could have had at least 10.2 KFC Double Downs for that amount, and it wouldn’t have required nearly that many vendors.

Also, it should be noted that the Ferry Plaza trip took approximately three hours door-to-door, and the second shopping trip for the chicken, buttermilk and cayenne took another 45 minutes.

I believe I can fry

The trip to pick up the illicit KFC Double Down took approximately an hour and fifteen minutes, including a drive to a KFC in an undisclosed location far enough from where we originated so no one we knew would see us, the parking, the purchasing of said “sandwich,” walking to a park to eat it, walking to a liquor store to buy a post-“sandwich” Diet Coke (I know…but really, does ANY of this make sense?), and driving back to wherever we may or may not have driven from in the first place.

Also, let’s note for the record that I had never, before Tuesday night, fried chicken at home. But the recipe was clear, I do have a modicum of cooking skill, and it turned out not to be that hard.

I arrived home from the store and began the preparation. This included the following steps:

Seasoning the chicken and then marinating it in buttermilk;
Making homemade mayonnaise with the eggs and the olive oil and the juice from an Oakland-grown lemon I picked up for free during the weekend’s garden tour;
Frying up some of the Fatted Calf bacon;
Eating some of the Fatted Calf bacon, because, come on, people—it was still going to be awhile until dinner;
Mixing up the dredging flour;
Doctoring up some of the mayonnaise to approximate my own version of the special sauce (This basically involved adding sweet paprika and cayenne until the mayonnaise tasted sassy);
Frying the chicken;
Slicing the cheese; and
Assembling the “sandwich.”

I steadily prepped and cooked (other than a 20-minute break while I waited for the chicken to get its full hour soaking in buttermilk), and didn’t eat the damn “sandwich” until 9:15 p.m.

I don’t even want to think about how many KFC Double Downs I could have bought, one trip through the drive-through at a time, during the seven hours and 45 minutes I spent, total, on shopping for and prepping this particular meal.

And, true to American fast food culture, I made this meal on a night when my roommate was at a concert. I ate it by myself. I even made sure to stream an episode of 30 Rock while I ate so it was a more “authentic” experience. Hell, I probably should have just taken the damn thing down to my car and eaten it there.

Lesson learned

I will say this: The sandwich I made at home? It was eminently tastier than the KFC version. The chicken tasted like actual chicken, it turns out I can actually fry chicken like a champ even though I had no real idea what I was doing, the bacon was insanely good, and the cheeses? To die for. Even the Gratto’s Sauce (my version of the Colonel’s concoction) was tasty and outstanding. But I could only eat half of what I prepared, and it wasn’t just because I’d snacked on bacon earlier. I had to actually chew it.

Yeah. The Colonel’s version? Goes down significantly more easily. And that’s all I’ll say about that.

At the end of the experiment, I tallied the true total. I didn’t technically have to go across the Bay to buy all the ingredients, so I’m estimating a true shopping and prep time of about four hours. And when I cost out the ingredients per sandwich, it works out something like this:

Egg: $.44
Olive oil: $4.50
Lemon: Free
Chicken Breast: $6.77
Buttermilk: $.37
Cayenne: $.04
Bacon: $1.76
Cheddar: $1
Capricorns: $1.86
Flour, salt, pepper, paprika, canola oil: Undetermined value

TOTAL: $16.74

And that’s before the mark-up for profit, were I to sell it to you.

Even with the adjustments for actual ingredients and more realistic time spent on shopping, the difference is staggering. That quick trip to KFC? That $5.65? You may think you’re saving time and money, but you’re not. You’re just delaying the time and the money you’re going to spend at the doctor’s office when your heart stops.

Made with wholesome ingredients or not, the Double Down? It may very well be a sign of the end of the world…as we know it.

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