I take back every mean thing I ever said about Quiznos and Subway. Because, as Andy George from How to Make Everything has just proven, making a sandwich is a back-breaking, time draining, and ultimately underwhelming endeavor. But, unlike an ordinary “sandwich artist,” Andy decided to use his lunch as a symbolic demonstration of the American public’s fundamental disconnection from food production by making every ingredient of his sandwich from scratch. He planted the vegetables, he baked the bread, and yes, he even Ned Stark-ed the chicken.
Andy spent $1500 on the six month project, which is a small price when compared to the physical strain of farming his ingredients, and the emotional strain of answering “so what have you been up to?” whenever he bumped into old high school friends at Applebee’s.
For all his efforts, Andy was left with a sandwich that was “not bad.” He seems to handle the disappointment well, which is admirable, because some people (author’s note: one of whom may or may not be myself) have been known to threaten ruinous Yelp reviews over “not bad” sandwiches that cost $1495 less.
Andy documented his entire sandwich-making adventure in an 11-part series of informative videos. You can watch all of them here, or, if you happen to be part of our national obsession with conveniently-packaged, ready-made, easily-digestible morsels, and lack the requisite patience for farm-to-table infotainment, Andy has also included a handy compilation montage that will take you through every step of the project in under four minutes.
If you’re the squeamish type or already a vegan, you might want to skip the video. But, for the rest of us who eat chicken (Trader Joe’s chicken tenders account for 50 percent of my daily calories and 100 percent of my body image issues), I think it’s important to watch the entire video; blood, feathers, and all. Because food doesn’t come from a store, it comes from farms, and animals, and the farmers who do the work we don’t want to do, so we can spend five dollars on a sandwich we don’t particularly enjoy.
