How Much Would You Spend To Make A Sandwich?

In my book, all it takes for a sandwich to be special is more than four ingredients or so (bread included), and a prep time of slightly more than 10 minutes. But one man spent six months and $1,500 making a sandwich completely from scratch, Jezebel reports, and I'm left feeling vaguely impressed but also vaguely confused.

Andy George definitely took his "slow food" seriously, pickling his own vegetables, growing ingredients for bread, making his own cheese and butter, and killing a chicken — all of which takes time. The ultimate results? "It’s not bad. That’s about it. It’s not bad," quoth George. Oops. To be sure, George is no stranger to projects like the sandwich made completely from scratch — in fact, he has a whole series, How To Make Everything, devoted to such tasks. Its self-proclaimed goal is to "explore everyday things many of us take for granted." While it's true that we take many things for granted, I'm not sure that's such a bad thing, in this particular case. The more that people have specialized on one task or other (chicken farming, vegetable-pickling, salt-making, and so on), the more prosperous the world becomes.

And obviously if you did still have to make all the ingredients for your sandwiches, you'd be eating vastly different sandwiches — salt pork on bread, anyone? I'm sure that during that whole six months, George was eating food that was made in one way or another by other people (or robots), and those other people were consuming things made by other people, and so on. Behold the miracle of trade.

While this is far from the silliest Internet sandwich stunt I've ever seen, it was all in service of making a point. Still, you can be thankful for the conveniences of modern food supplies without first punishing yourself with a heavy dose of Protestant food work ethic. If your time and energy are better spent on being a good accountant, or hugging your kids, or hugging your cat, or playing sudoku, or sleeping than on making salt, don't feel guilty.

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