Revised: My Own Meal

                                                                   My Own Meal (Revised)
The plan is to make a guilt free dish. What that means to me is pretty subjective, but I don't really see any other way of making a dish that I can refer to as mine. Guilt free means no mutated chickens, no cows fed with corn, and, consequently, no cow-shit ridden ecol. Guilt free means not contributing to agricultural industrial complex that is Monsanto, Tyson, or any other faceless vendor; I want to buy my ingredients from a person; even better, I want to buy my ingredients from a person who lives in Kalamazoo. Having said all this, I still want my meal to be a reflection of me and hence, be full of contradictions: that is why I am making dishes that are normally found on the menus of America's favorite restaurant chains. I settled on Red Lobster's amazing Cheddar Biscuits, Big Boy's famous Slim Jim sandwich, and the Egg McMuffin, which wants no adjectival validation. (I would make a funny joke about heart disease but frankly, I think it's implied.)
In the name of general accommodation, allow me to explain my dishes. The Silm Jim is a smoked ham sandwich with Swiss, lettuce, and something that could be described as Thousand Isles dressing. The thing about Slim Jim's is, they're not really that special, they just taste good. Ham and Swiss is a delicious combination, and Thousand Isles dressing is quite frankly, the shit. To that same degree,  Red Lobster's Cheddar Biscuits are little more than buttery biscuits mixed with cheddar, however, they have a very distinct taste because they are made with Bisquick, which makes them  sweet to the taste. This means they go well before dinner because they are good, and well with dinner because they are sweet while dinner is almost always salty. (sweet and salty being my favorite food related sensation on earth). The Egg McMuffin (praise be) is a simple combination of an English muffin, a slice of ham, piece of cheese, and an egg. It is simple, but has a soft chew texture that I find immensely appealing. I have an idea of how to replicate that texture, but I will leave that alone for the moment.
 I also chose these meals because of their simplicity, these meals are accessible to everybody and that's how I want them to be. I am a man born of the Internet, and as such, I believe in the sharing (ability to acquire without paying for intellectual rights) in all things; a good idea must be shared with everybody. That spirit of sharing is what led me the recipe of the Cheddar Biscuits, which I found on Reddit.
Having well established the concept of my meal I would like to take the time explain the kitchen in which it will be cooked. Rick Burks, the swashbuckling Accounting major at Western University, opted to lend me his kitchen so that I could get off campus for a change. Rick is the same person who fed me Spice Rice for the first time. I had never cooked at Rick's house, so I really didn't know what to expect; nonetheless, I'm sure it will be fun.
As it turns out, things went wrong before I even started cooking. Upon actually looking at the recipe for the Cheddar Biscuits I was confronted with two terrible truths.
1: The recipe called for Bisquick and hence, processed foods.
2: The recipe called for onion powder and hence, processed foods.
Thankfully, I found out that Bisquick is little more than flower, salt, and shortening; that would be a simple fix. The second problem proved to be the one reality I would have to face in making this meal.  Although I could make my own Bisquick easily enough, I hadn't the slightest idea how to make non-processed onion powder, and I wasn't going to leave it out because I wanted to make these fast food dishes taste every bit as good as their counterparts. In light of that, I decided to break down and use the regular Meijir brand onion powder. The rest of my ingredients were blissfully simple to acquire: eggs, cheese, bread, ham, butter, and a few other odds and ends could all be found at, Park St. Market, Food Dance (the cheese), Quality Meat Inc, and Great Harvest Bread. Now all I had to do was cook this mother. Bring it on.
      I will not try and sugar coat this. Rick's kitchen is useless. It is small, dirty, and very cluttered. While I may be ill-designed for cooking (I am prone to knocking things over, and forgetting about them altogether) I had hoped that the kitchen I was cooking in wouldn't be. Also, the location of the kitchen in relation to the back door meant there was always traffic traveling in and out of the already hectic kitchen. This meant that while I searched- frequently in the wrong places- for pots and pans (that may or may not have existed in the first place) I had to worry about getting in the way of the people who actually owned the kitchen. With up to 10 people in the house at any given time, this made for a very dynamic cooking experience. Nonetheless, I dug my heels in and  preheated the Soviet-era oven to 375. All I needed to do for the Cheddar biscuits was bake the cheesy dough and garnish it once it was done cooking so I figured that I could cook them while I cooked the ham. I was  pleasantly surprised to find out that Rick owns a big, beautiful, cast-iron skillet that was given to him by his Grandpa; this was be perfect for cooking the smoked ham that I got from Quality Meat due to it's large size and cast iron's knack for absorbing oil. While the smoked ham cooked, I sliced the baguette that I got from Great Harvest in half. Then, I cut that in half vertically, and then sliced them into muffin-sized portions before I soaked the bejesus out of them in salted butter; that is my secret ingredient, and that is also why I know better. I am a visionary. I cooked the eggs in a pan (duh) but confined them in a circle that I created out of some leftover aluminum from a house renovation project. The result was a condescending look from Rick that quickly disappeared when he saw that my eggs that perfectly imitated the consistency and thickness of those found on the Egg McMuffin (we are not worthy). Screw you, Rick. I spent the next 2 hours cooking all of the food I had bought. This was also part of my shtick: I wanted all of my food cooked and eaten, that goes along with my belief in sharing things.
      The meal was great fun: Rick set up the long tables that were normally reserved for Beer Pong in the living room so everybody could eat together, and he placed the keg he had purchased the night before right next to them. Before I served myself, I took a second to watch everybody eat the food that I had prepared. I took a lot of satisfaction in this meal, I cooked it, I planned it out, and I was proud of it. I had fed myself without contributing to American Imperialism or global warming. Once I noticed that the Cheddar Biscuits were almost gone, I stopped thinking about the philosophical implications of cooking my own meal and scurried over to grab some breakfast before those assholes ate it all without me.

How did it taste? Awesome. Was I surprised? Nope. That is the beauty of my meal and the point I was trying to make with this collection of foods. Fast Food is good, but it's also simple, that's why it's fast. Making a tasty meal and NOT worrying about fat content is quite simple. Salted butter is easy to work into any recipe, and Bisquick can be made at home. My baguette muffin did not taste exactly like the English muffins found on McMuffins, but I enjoyed the taste of it because it was tastefully salted and very soft. The provolone that I got from Food Dance was outstanding, and I was very heavy handed in my application of it. My Slim Jim's were excellent due in large part to the quality ingredients I used. Good smoked ham, with good Laack Cheddar cheese from food dance, and a nicely sliced baguette made the Thousand Island dressing I was going to use irrelevant. I know that sounds funny since I first argued (quite brashly) that Thousand Island dressing is one of the deciding parts of this dish, but I enjoyed this much simpler recipe much more than my usual Slim Jim. There's a contradiction for you. The Cheddar Biscuits were identical, thank you Internet.
 Instead of trying to make something complicated, I opted to make a few homemade dishes in the relative comfort of my friend's kitchen.  In doing this, I sought to deliver these dishes from their fast-food quality by using better ingredients and local meats. My finished product was not at all what I envisioned it to be, but I am not upset about that at all. My meal may not have been the healthiest, the most well executed, the greenest, the most complex or even the best tasting, but it was both delicious and mine and that's why I cooked it.