Fast food my way - part 1

As many of you already know -

I don't get along with fast food restaurants. Or should I say - their food doesn't get along with me. The stories I could tell you about Mc D's and BK would make you stay away from them.

And then there are the television commercials showing the most succulent, huge, mouth-watering sandwiches ever.

Don't fall for it. That is NOT what they look like.

For instance - go to Mc Donald's and order their fish sandwich. You will get a roll with a 2-inch square fish patty that is grease-soaked and hanging off one side of the bun. You will find a half slice of American cheese on the other side of the bun - but just about 1/16th of the end of it. The rest is trying to escape out of the cardboard box it is in. They try to camouflage it with gobs and gobs of tartar sauce that is just oozing all around. Guaranteed that when you pick it up - you will wear 95% of the tartar sauce on that sandwich. The amount of tartar sauce you are now wearing would fill a bottle to take home. The roll looks like they slathered a cup of oil over it as well; lift once and your fingers and hands are greased for life. After one bite you begin to call it a fish "WISH" SANDWICH - BECAUSE IT TAKES SEVERAL BITES TO FIND THE FISH ON THE ROLL! And they serve this to you with withered french fries. It's amazing how fast food joints buy fries that "wither"!

I do enjoy a nice fish sandwich, with cheese and tartar sauce, and even topped with lettuce on a nice roll.

Now this takes me to the frozen fish patties by Mrs. Paul, Van de Kamp, etc. Once again - you will end up with a 2-inch square of "mock" fish that is good for nothing. So you now have 2 choices - suffer through fish"WISH" sammies or venture out and find a solution.

So - to rectify this - I go to the barns. We've called them that all our lives - restaurant wholesalers all lined up in a row at the "barns" selling everything a restaurant could ever want.

I find a 10-pound box of 4-ounce each breaded fish fillets patties. Perfect for playing Mc D's at home. I make my own breading for fish, but there are times I just want to whip up a quick fish sammie for myself and these work out just fine. All I have to do is drizzle a baking tin with a bit of oil (of use a skillet) and cook them. They turn out much better than the deep-fried, oil-soaked morsels you get at a fast-food joint. And they really taste like fish because they are fish - not what Mc D's or BK tries to pawn off on us.

Also, I purchase my sliced American cheese there. I don't buy Kraft. Kraft has lost touch with reality. They do not know what foods are supposed to taste like. Kraft just wants the profits - so they feed the masses junk foods, full of preservatives, so over-processed that you cannot eat them. Eat enough Kraft products and you will never need to be embalmed. You're slowly doing it yourself eating their foods. And Kraft cheese is the absolute WORST cheese on the market - next to Elsie the cow from Borden.

I do not eat "plastic" cheese. It's right up there with the crappy margarine they try to pawn off on us - like we are stupid or something.

The American cheese at the barns is closer to the old-fashioned American cheese we used to get when I was little. The type of cheese that had flavor and it would crack and crumble when you folded it.

Another really lousy cheese company is Sorrento Cheese. Once again - they have ruined the recipes/formulas for Italian cheeses. Plastic Italian cheese by Sorrento. And they have the world's worse ricotta cheese as well. I am so glad that I make my own - at least I am eating a real cheese and not crap.

But - as I was starting to say in the beginning - before I got on my soapbox - today's lunch was fast food my way.

I wanted one of those luscious-looking breaded chicken sandwiches that I would be able to ingest, digest, and not pay the price for later.

After soaking my skinless boneless chicken breasts in buttermilk, I coated them with delicately seasoned bread crumbs:

homemade bread, dried and processed into crumbs
Kosher salt
fresh ground black pepper
fresh minced parsley
homemade garlic powder
pinch sage

Placed on an oiled baking sheet and baked until done.

Lightly toasted a crusty Italian roll, slathered with mayonnaise and sprinkled with a pinch of my homemade dipping sauce (dry mix) and stacked with fresh leafy lettuce and thin sliced tomatoes. A nice side of assorted pickles, olives and pepperoncini - we were happy.

Now that was a GOOD sandwich. I won't be paying for it later.

While I'm at it (trust me!) -

allow me to share this with you from Netscape:

Fast Food Soda Tainted With WHAT?
Nearly half of soft drinks in fast food restaurants that are dispensed in soda fountains could be contaminated with fecal coliform bacteria, according to a study from Hollins University in Roanoke, Virginia, report CNN and ABC News.

Led by Renee Godard, a professor of biology and environmental studies, the team sampled 90 beverages from 30 fast food restaurants in a 22-mile radius of Roanoke. Samples were taken from both self-service and employee-dispensed machines. The Hollins team contained the samples in petri dishes and the bacteria multiplied within 48 hours, so much so that they actually became visible to the naked eye as 300 to 400 tiny dots, Godard said. All types of beverages that came out of the machines were contaminated, including sugared, diet and even water.

The specific findings:


About 70 percent of the beverages had some form of bacteria.

48 percent of the beverages contained coliform bacteria.

17 percent had Chryseobacterium meningosepticum, which could sicken newborns or adults with weakened immune systems.

11 percent contained E. coli, which are mostly harmless, but some can cause diarrhea, urinary tract infections, respiratory illness and pneumonia.

Only 20 percent of the sodas sampled had coliform bacteria that exceeded the limit for drinking water set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
While we come into contact with bacteria every day and some of those are even good for us, one thing we don't want is E.coli in our Coke, Pepsi or 7-Up. Even though the EPA's drinking-water regulations require that all samples test negative for E.coli, many of the sodas from the tested dispensers fell below U.S. drinking water standards.

"The large number of beverages and soda fountain machines containing E. coli is still of considerable concern...and suggests that more pathogenic strains of bacteria could persist and thrive in soda fountain machines if introduced," the authors wrote in International Journal of Food.

How is the soda contaminated with bacteria? The study didn't identify the potential sources of how the bacteria were established, but Godard speculates that someone--an employee or customer--dispensed soda with a hand that was not clean. In addition, wet rags used to wipe down a machine could also transmit bacteria. Once the bacteria are on the fountain nozzle, they could grow up inside the lining of the plastic tubing and start colonizing within the machine. The plastic tubing is not routinely cleaned.


And did you know that worms grow in these tubes that are never cleaned?

Anyone for lunch at a fast food joint????