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The Evil Sandwich and the Mostly Vegetarian

I am mostly a vegetarian. I have been for over four years, largely because eating vegetarian is one of the easiest ways to eat a low-fat diet. I work in front of a computer more than 12 hours a day, at least five days a week, and I need to eat better food. I am still overweight, but I would weight at least forty pounds more than I do were I still eating hamburgers and pork products every day.

I don’t have any ethical objection to meat; my grandfather raised cattle, and my parents still have cattle on their land (though the grazing is leased to a family friend). I even eat meat occasionally -- usually no more than about three times per month -- because something good comes along or because it’s all that’s available at the time. After having read “Fast Food Nation”, though, I’m glad that as a vegetarian I miss out on all the antibiotic-resistant diseases in chicken, the chance of CJD (“human mad cow disease”) in beef, and supporting the low-wage, high-turnover, soul-sapping fast food industry, at least in its majority.

I almost never buy meat, but I’ll eat it at restaurants or at the farm. For example, the other day, Mom cooked some crispy bacon for club sandwiches for her granddaughter, The Deb. There was one strip of bacon left, and I ate it. One strip every 5-6 months doesn’t hurt much, but it reminded me how strange the fake bacon really is. When I eat at a Chinese food buffet, I usually have a few nuggets of sesame chicken, and I eat some turkey at Thanksgiving and a little ham at Christmas. Sometimes I’ll be at an event where only sandwiches are served, and a sandwich doesn’t hurt too much. But that’s about it. I have ham in the freezer, but I only use it to make Navy Bean Soup for mom and dad. (Mom can’t make Navy Bean Soup she likes, because she refuses to put in all the flavorful ingredients she thinks she doesn’t like, such as celery and carrots, that you need to make real bean soup.)

These small entries usually satisfy any feelings of “missing out” I may have from vegetarianism, and there aren’t many of them. I’m not tempted by burgers or roasts or steaks. Sometimes I miss the aroma of meat cooking in the house, like a nice roast chicken or a beef stew, but not often, and baking bread or cookies usually works just as well.

Bennigan’s, however, is usually my undoing. Bennigan’s serves the most evil sandwidch in the entire world. It’s called the “Monte Cristo”, and I first had one in high school, and I’m still hooked.

Evil evil evil evil evil evil.

It is essentially a double-decker sandwich with ham, turkey, swiss, and american cheese products on “wheat” bread. The bread doesn’t look very dark, but remember, even white bread is technically “wheat” bread because it’s made from wheat. (The primary ingredient in most “wheat” bread is “enriched wheat flour”, the same thing as white flour; for nutritious bread, the first and only kind of flour should be “whole wheat flour”).

This sandwich has ham that’s almost a nuclear pink and turkey that looks like it’s been bleached, plus the two cheeses. From the start you know you’re not getting any nutrition here, but it gets worse. There was a chance kids or other Americans wouldn’t find this goopy enough, so Bennigan’s batters it and deep fries the entire sandwich, then dusts it with powdered sugar, serving it with french fries (also, of course, deep fried).

By this point, you realize, the sandwich and side are so greasy that it’s hard to sustain eating it. Each bite is OK, but it leaves your mouth and throat feeling like you’ve snored through a night in a room filled with vaporized Crisco. It needs some kind of acid to cut through some of the grease and make you want more, so the culinary geniuses at Bennigan’s serve it with a side of raspberry jam, managing to pack hundreds more calories into a condiment served only to make it easier to eat the million-plus calorie Evil Sandwich.

Of course, most people order a soft drink with such a meal anyway, and that’s enough of an acid to clear the tongue and throat to go for another bite, and to get a few hundred more empty calories.

I know this sandwich is evil. I know that Bennigan’s has no commitment to nutrition, like most restaurant chains, and I know there are few things I could eat that are worse for me than the evil sandwich. And yet I’ve wanted one all week. I almost went to Oklahoma City at 11:30 PM last night to get one. Today I could no longer resist, and I had one for dinner.

Well, 75% of one. They cut it into four triangles so you can pick it up and eat it without having it slide out of your fingers, and I ate three of them. I also craved some nutrition, so I had the Spinach-Artichoke Dip. That’s a mixture of spinach, artichoke hearts, and cheese, roughly in the ratio 2:1:4. Of course, Americans wouldn’t eat spinach or artichokes without it being smothered in cheese, would we? I ate most of the dip and that displaced 25% of the Evil Sandwich’s grip.

I splurged even more with Dr. Pepper as my beverage. Sure enough, at one point the servers forgot about me and I waited for several minutes for a new glass of DP, and during that time I couldn’t really bring myself to start the next segment of Evil Sandwich. Without the fat-clearing acid of the soft drink, the sandwich was too much. It makes you wonder how much the rise of soft drinks has made America a fat nation. With people drinking Pepsi for breakfast and guzzling Mountain Dew like there’s no tomorrow, they’re already ingesting plenty of empty calories, but how much does the acid of a soft drink make it easier for us to ingest foods that would be way too fatty to eat without such lubrication? I could have had water with the Evil Sandwich, but I think it would have been harder to eat.

When I go on vacation, I tend to let a few things go so I can rest, and usually I wind up eating a meal I regret. The Evil Sandwich was it for this run; on the way home, I was already feeling like there was a big lump of lard in my stomach. I even brought the last 25% of the sandwich home, but I stopped to get groceries and I tossed it in the market’s trash can. I don’t need to eat that. I bought vegetables and caffiene-free diet colas (Coke and Dr. Pepper) and whole wheat bagels for gardenburgers, plus egg beaters, some fresh parsley and cilantro, and some skim milk.

I think next week will be a better food week.

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