My Appalling Lunch

Posted on November 1, 2006    Posted by      62 Comments

A sandwich made with: Beef sticks, American cheese and Wonder Bread, nuked for 60 seconds. And a Coke Zero.

Yes, apparently on the inside, I am a 12-year-old boy. A chunky one.

Discuss.

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62 Comments on “My Appalling Lunch”

  1. American cheese slice or aerosol cheese? I just want to be clear on the exact dearth of nutritional content before commenting.

  5. Speaking of the stuff you loved eating when you were twelve… I had one of those Twinkies the other day, the kind covered in raspberry jelly and dusted in coconut? Dude, NOT as good as I remembered them being.

  7. I’m rocking just a couple of reheated meat pies. No no, not tourtiere – that’s far too fancy for my budget. These are cheap no name brand meat pies, no veggies inside or anything special like that, they’d just get in the way of this heart failure inducing deliciousness.

    And a diet coke to drink, because I’m trying to watch my figure (not like anyone else is looking at it).

  9. Dude, your colon HATES you now.

    Do you just lie on the couch in a stupor while Krissy berates you and Athena pities you? Or do you fitfully sleep it off and dream of the phone endlessly ringing but hving no strength to pick it up?

    I’ll be making some soba with vegetables.

  10. Dude, your colon HATES you now.

    Do you just lie on the couch in a stupor while Krissy berates you and Athena pities you? Or do you fitfully sleep it off and dream of the phone endlessly ringing but hving no strength to pick it up?

    I’ll be making some soba with vegetables.

  11. Dude, your colon HATES you now.

    Do you just lie on the couch in a stupor while Krissy berates you and Athena pities you? Or do you fitfully sleep it off and dream of the phone endlessly ringing but hving no strength to pick it up?

    I’ll be making some soba with vegetables.

  12. Dude, your colon HATES you now.

    Do you just lie on the couch in a stupor while Krissy berates you and Athena pities you? Or do you fitfully sleep it off and dream of the phone endlessly ringing but hving no strength to pick it up?

    I’ll be making some soba with vegetables.

  15. I think if you’d added the Whip, then dipped the whole thing in Coke Zero, and *then* microwaved it, you might have created a new form of life.

  16. Just a heads up: I think it’s technically illegal for you to refer to it as ‘cheese’ in an international forum. I don’t know if the US is a willing party to extraditions for that, though..

  17. joehill:

    Are you talking about the Dolly Madison brand Zingers? If so, yeah, they were always a little weird. Although I like the commercials that used to run with the Charlie Brown specials, in which Snoopy became “The Zinger Zapper.” It’s Snoopy! And he’s a unrepentant criminal!

  18. As a vegetarian, I have to take exception with the idea that it’s okay to have beef sticks on a sandwich. But processed cheez f00d and a couple of slices from a Loaf of Wonder? What’s bad about that?

    The only really egregious faux pas I can detect here: you forgot the mayo!

    ;’)

  19. I think we need a mini photo essay documenting this sandwich. It should include you eating, b/c I think this might be a hoax.

  21. Sorry for the hijack….but I had say this.

    I just finished The Android’s Dream. Thank you very much for the experience, John. That book is one of the most refreshing ones that I have read in a good long time.

    Of course, it has only been about two minutes since I finished and already the withdrawal pains are near intolerabe. I WANT MORE!

    Anyway, thanks again.

    Blaine

  22. By the way,

    Coke Zero??? Are you insane??

    I am with some of the others here about the mayo though. No self respecting meat sandwich would be caught without mayo…. or even Miracle Whip.

    Cheers

  24. What the hell’s wrong with Wonder Bread? It helps build strong bodies 12 ways! And now that I’ve demonstrated I’m the oldest person in the room…
    John, my dog wants to know if you shared at least a sliver of the cheese with your dog. That’s the protocol in our house.
    Chef Jeff culinary tip: if you ever find yourself out of American slices, look for string cheese. Take your wire cheese slicer doo-dad and have at it. You should be able to get four bread-width slices (Yes, cut lengthwise; the dog would just love to have mini cheese disks rolling everywhere, wouldn’t she?).
    Oh, yeah. Mayo? Barf.

  25. What’s wrong with mayo???

    I am not sure I could ever trust anyone that didn’t appreciate the artery clogging goodness of the pure wholesome snappy goodness of whipped up fat and eggs.

    sheesh…..

  28. I will not contend that mayo is actually, say, good for a person, but…..

    I have been known to eat sandwiches composed of nothing more that slice cheese, mayo, pepper and bread.

    Why does fat have to taste so damn good anyway?

  30. This is my favorite part about being a grown-up. You can have peanut-butter-and-chocolate ice cream for dinner and NO ONE CAN STOP YOU.

    In fact, maybe at some fundamental level, this is *the* good thing about being a grown-up.

  31. I’m really surprised by all the negative attention given to Coke Zero (gag) and no attention given to microwaving. My inner 13-year-old would have heated that sandwich on a griddle to get full toasty goodness out of the Wonder Bread and melty delight out of the cheese. Left-over Halloween candy would have been a side dish. And as long as the griddle was on, I probably would have put some of the candy on it just to see what would happen. Not that I am perilously close to my inner 13-year-old or anything . . .

  32. Coke Zero? I have to say, as a Diet Coke addict for my sins (and my dentist’s continuing prosperity) you just sacrificed a bucketful of credibility.

    Like you care.

    Like I mean it.

    And I’m old enough to have believed the urban myth that the Coke sold on American bases over here actually deserved the name.

    Coke Zero? I cannot believe it.

  33. I also don’t get the Coke Zero thing. Is it the artificial sweetener?

    Around here they’ve got “Wonder Bread for Kids” that has been reformulated so it has, like, fiber and other good stuff in it. They bleached the hell out of it so it looks like the old (good) bread but they can’t duplicate the original texture. Like diet soda it is a ‘nice try,’ and probably healthier, but not as tasty as the original.

    I never used to ‘get’ food discussions until I realized for many people food supplies their need for spirituality. That explains a LOT.

  39. I should say I do have one good memory of Wonder Bread. They had a bakery just down the road from where I went to college and the smell of baking bread would waft over the neighborhoods at night. Ah, airborne alcohol. Good times.

  40. So, those of you bashing our host for drinking the delicious nectar that is Coke Zero, are you actually suggesting that Diet Coke is superior? That laboratory experiment gone awry? That acidic backwash? Are you people insane?

    True story: Diet Coke is a diet version of New Coke. Whereas the vastly, undeniably superior Coke Zero is actually a diet version of Coke Classic. Which is why it is, in every way, superior.

  41. I gotta go with the no-mayo crowd here. I can’t stand the stuff myself. I don’t drink soda, so I’ll just stay out of the Coke vs. Diet Coke vs. Coke Zero argument except to say all those commercials of the people who insist they’re drinking Coke when the can clearly says Coke Zero are pretty stupid.

  43. Nathan, not to rub salt in the wound,

    NAYNAYAYANA……….

    I walked into the local B&N last night, bought the book, then called in sick just to finish the book today…

    Trust me, the wait will be worth it! :P

  44. 1. Cheese slices are delicious, unless you melt them. Ugh.

    2. What’s with all the mayo love? Is it because most here are American? I mean, there are sandwiches I’d have mayo on. But most of the times, mustard just tastes better.

    3. What exactly is meant by beef sticks? I’m a little frightened.

  45. I guess I am the only one here but I have to ask, what the hell is a beef stick? Are we talking something like a slim jim?

    And on a nutritious bent, I tried a Honey Crisp apple at your recomendation and it was pretty damn good.

  46. Re: Beef Stick: Yes, indeed, very much like a Slim Jim, which is a brand of beef stick.

  47. When I was twelve I would eat pepperoni and sour cream sandwiches. just spread sour cream on 2 slices of bread and apply many pepperoni disks. I figured, “hey, i like sour cream, i like pepperoni…how can I go wrong?”

    My fat ass can attest 21 years later that i COULD go horribly wrong, and I did.

  48. God. It’s like you picked the most disgusting unfood out there. It’s like you sit up at night thinking, “Gee, what kind of food can I eat that has no nutritional value whatsoever, and, when vomited up, actually tastes better the second time around?” This, when you could be thinking about your next novel. What do I pay you for?

    Disgusting.

    Amusing too. But really, really disgusting.

  49. The point of the mayo is that the sandwich is a disgusting, dripping mass of fat. So why be lame about it? Why not go, as it were, whole hog? Mayo, man! Mustard is health food, for God’s sake! There’s no calories. No fat. What’s the *point*, I ask you?

  50. Oh, and the anonymous comment above was mine. Still trying to work out the Intradweeb thing.

  51. Re: what’s the point of mustard? Well… taste? I mean, as I kind of indicated, there are definitely times I just want to slather some fat-based topping on a sandwich. But most of the time I prefer something that actually adds to the taste of the sandwich. I dunno.

    Also, holysweetmonkeyjesus John made a sandwich outta Slim Jims? My utter revulsion is only balanced by my lunatic admiration for this feat (I say that as a guy who has been known to buy and eat a pack of twenty mini Hot Rods, possibly while high).

  52. Wow. Just…wow.

    (Though if you take out the beef sticks, add sliced tomatoes and grill it with a little olive oil or butter instead of nuking it? One mighty fine grilled cheese and tomato sandwich.)

    I’m sucking on a Tootsie Roll Pop right now with a cup of soda water nearby. I am not in any position to comment on nutritional value…

  57. I like the ingredients list, and I feel true sympathy for the man who had to give up real coke.

    I think the real travesty is the nuking for SIXTY SECONDS !?!??

    That’s a long time (unless you have a 20 year old, barely-alive-anymore microwave.)

    By then, I think the beef stick would shrivel and harden to cinnamon sticks with a leather-jerky flavor.

    The “cheese” would melt, boil, and separate into a thin oil and other stuff,

    and the bread would do something weird, I’m not sure what. I do know that over-nuked tortillas are soft and steamy but too hot to eat until they cool, but once they cool they’re dry, crunchy frisbees.

    So John, did you Really nuke it that long, or were you just throwing us a nice even number?

    I suppose that with a convenience-food sandwich like that it would be appropriate to cook it with the fewest button-pushes possible.

  58. MAYO……YUCK
    Who would want to eat dead baby chicken embryos whipped with vinegar. Again I say Yuck.

  59. What I find odd is that we got almost fifty posts into this thread before we found out whether the Frankensandwich was good or not.

    Oh, and put me in the camp that says that if I have to drink diet pop, Coke Zero is the way to go.

  60. can’t stop giggling! and yet… I’d totally make this same sandwich. totally. I think I’d add ketchup or BBQ sauce (just a dash).

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