*This is due to my parents temporarily living in my uncle's house when they first moved to Columbus while he was in Namibia. He had restored the birthplace of the longtime President of Coca-Cola along with the Woodruff House. It just happened to coincide with the renewal of my drivers license in college and was the "permanent" address. Tomorrow, however, this will no longer be the case as a kindly Washington, GA police officer recently informed me that you actually only have 60 days to change your license, even if you did spring for the 10 year plan, you at least changed your name on your social security card and you dislike paperwork.
Luckily at Ingles, they had a great sale on organic chicken breasts. I also picked up a box of bread mix. I knew I could whip up some sandwich buns pretty quickly but I was kind of secretly curious about those mixes. And, since it was a "fast food" night I thought it was fitting as well as being way better than a bag of store bought buns or sandwich bread.
At home, I pulled out the Cuisinart breadmaker that Reid's cousins gave us for our wedding. I had used this religiously when we first got married and didn't have a working oven. (Along with a panini press we had eaten the best sandwiches in our limited kitchen. Plus it was kind of awesome to have Reid come home to the smell of freshly baking bread...definitely felt like a housewife extraordinaire). So I was psyched to use my long lost kitchen helper.
After it took me about 20 seconds to "make" bread by adding a cup of water, the mix and the yeast packet, I started on the chicken. I googled a few "mock" chicken sandwich recipes and the basic tip was adding powdered sugar to the flour/salt/pepper breading. It might have worked but I didn't have any powdered sugar on hand and it kind of sounded gross anyway. Just wrong to do that to organic chicken. I did add a tiny bit of raw sugar but decided I would be just as happy with paprika/sea salt/pepper batter than trying to match the fast food favorite perfectly.
I first cut the chicken breasts in half and then tried to pound them a little flatter which probably would have worked better with a wooden meat pounder than the back of a big spoon which was what I used. Then I let the chicken soak a few minutes in a cup of organic milk with an egg that we got at the market from Sandy Saturday. (She said technically they are Charlie's chickens). Then I battered them (did the process twice for that full on FF effect) and put them all at once in a cast iron chicken fryer. Covered it for 5 minutes; turned them and covered them again for five minutes. They came out pretty perfect.
Well...that didn't take very long and we still had about 2 hours left for the bread to finish. Since we rarely fry anything I always feel like I have to "make the most" out of it because you've got all this batter and hot oil assembly line going. I don't reuse oil (oxidation=not good for ya), so I did what any short order fry cook would do and sliced up an onion. About twenty minutes later Reid and I were feasting on homemade onion rings with plenty of ketchup. (My favorite is the Heinz organic ketchup...taste is really phenoemenal, but I'm still pretty happy with the "Simply Heinz" which is at least void of high fructose corn syrup).
This made a pretty great appetizer because it was still a little over an hour before we could eat our "real" dinner, i.e. my homemade, "It's Sunday and we live an hour away from the nearest Chick-fil-a anyway" chicken sandwiches. When the bread machine buzzer finally went off, I ran over to see what this magical quick mix had done. Unfortunately, it didn't do a whole lot and gave us a loaf about 3 inches high as opposed to the picture on the package which looked more like a good 5-6" loaf. Oh well-the denser loaf turned out to be a little sturdier for our sandwiches. I was about to butter the bun then realized there really was no point since the bread had literally just finished baking and didn't need it. Plus, Reid wanted a little Duke's on his anyway. After then piling them high with pickles (two really isn't enough in my opinion), they were all ready to go.
Well, almost. I realized my little homemade fast food sandwich was missing one thing-an icy cold can of Coke. (And not that diet stuff either).
Now, I am a firm believer in not buying 2 liters of soda or cases of soft drinks to have on hand at your house. Diet or not, there is absolutely nothing of nutritional value in them. They are empty calories that do little to nothing to ease your hunger. Many people treat soft drinks as simply another beverage like milk or water, but believe me- it ain't water. Soft drinks really should be treated more as a very occassional dessert. And even though the "diet" drinks don't have calories, they do have artificial sweeteners (*GRAS) and plenty of phosphoric acid-which isn't good for your bone health and certainly doesn't compare to the benefits of water or green tea. (If you really need that fizz, try sparkling water, like Perrier, with a splash of lime, OJ and pomegranate juice...kind of amazing and more like a daytime "cocktail." Scandalous huh?)
So that being said, Reid and I didn't just have a Coke in the fridge to pull out to go with our sandwiches. We thought about it for a second and then deemed it totally worth it to jump in the car and drive to the nearest Coke machine. This just happened to be the one in front of Bobby Steven's store a few miles from our house. We grabbed some quarters and then set off on our little late night "Coca-Cola run." (Just one of our many romantic adventures). The best part is that we were completely right on it being "worth it" and I savored every sip.
And here is a pic (finally, right?) Reid took of our semi-homemade fast food meal (that took closer to 3 hours to make)...
Hope ya'll enjoyed your dinner as much as we did!
-Reid & Kathryn
