Day 21

So after I made my delicious loaf of bread, I tried to make my first sandwich in almost three weeks, and realized almost immediately that the mayonnaise in the fridge was off-limits. Which makes for, in my book at least, a pretty weak sandwich. And I wasn't going to tolerate that. I FINALLY made a loaf of bread. I was FINALLY going to get to make a sandwich. It was GOING to be a delicious sandwich. It was GOING to have mayo.

I found a recipe from my favorite Food Network personality and, because I trust Alton with my whole heart and soul, I dove right in.

And let me tell you, there was a lot of trust involved with this recipe. In further demonstration of my food ignorance, until last night I had never actually seen mayonnaise made before. And, while I knew that it was basically eggs and oil and vinegar, I never really thought about it until I saw the recipe. At which point I thought, Really? I'm just going to mix up some oil with an egg yolk and it's going to turn into mayonnaise and not just a big, greasy, liquidy mess? I was highly skeptical.

As per Alton's instructions, I whisked one egg yolk with 1/2 teaspoon fine salt, 1/2 teaspoon dry mustard, and 2 pinches sugar.

So far so good...

After that, you mix 2 teaspoons fresh squeezed lemon juice and 1 tablespoon white wine vinegar together in a separate measuring cup and then pour about half of it into the egg yolk mixture and whisk HARD until you get an emulsion.

Or, so I'm told. You're supposed to whisk until the mixture gets a little bit lighter and thicker, although I whisked for a good long time and didn't see much of a change. Eventually, I just thought, Well, hope that's good enough... and prayed I didn't totally screw it up.

And I didn't! To my complete surprise, as I dropped a few drops of oil into the mixture and continued to whisk hard, a mayonnaise-like substance actually began to form.

Whaaaat!?

So after the mixture starts looking like mayo, you can ease up a little and start pouring the oil in a thin, steady stream. Which is kind of a two-person job. If you don't have a second person, you can make it in the food processor, or, if you're like me and you don't have a second person and you don't realize until you're pretty much done that there was a much easier way to do this, I found that alternately adding the oil in small quantities and whisking worked just fine.

This was also the only place I differed with Alton. He says to use safflower or corn oil, but since I'm not sure if you can get either of those oils through stone-grinding (Rule 42) and I was too lazy to check, I went with olive oil. Olive oil will apparently make a darker mayonnaise with a distinct olive oil flavor, which, to me, is a total plus.

Anyway from there it's pretty easy - just slowly add half the oil, then the other half of the vinegar and lemon juice, then the other half of the oil (still slowly) and whisk until your arm falls off! Mayonnaise!

From start to finish, the whole project probably took about 20 minutes and, unlike ketchup, was not a pain in the ass at all. The recipe made enough mayo to last me longer than it will probably keep, which, according to Alton, is a week. Not gonna lie, I'll probably try and eat it for two. If I don't die, I'll report back with my findings.

The end result, by the way was fresh and delicious. I don't think I even knew what real mayo is supposed to taste like. I can tell already that it's going to blend with other ingredients like lemon and dill or roasted garlic way better than bottled mayo, which makes me nerdily excited. Aioli time!

Day 8

4. Avoid food products that contain high-fructose corn syrup.
5. Avoid food products that have some form of sugar (or sweetener listed among) the top three ingredients.

For my ninth birthday party, I had begged my parents for Crystal Pepsi. Remember Crystal Pepsi? I was obsessed with it. It tasted like Pepsi! But it was totally clear! Amazing! I was dying to try it, but my parents, health nuts even in the 80's before it became du jour, forbade it. They made an exception for my special day, though, and I could not wait. The first thing I did when my first guest, a sweet mousy girl named Shannon, arrived was foist a tall glass of Crystal Pepsi upon her.

"Does this have sugar in it?" she asked. "My mom says I'm not allowed to have sugar. It makes me too hyper."

"I don't know," I said. "Let's check." We read the ingredients together; I didn't understand a full two-thirds of them, but none of them were sugar. "Good to go," I said, and handed her her glass.

Needless to say, she went bananas.

That was the moment when I learned that lots of labels say "high fructose corn syrup" when they mean to say "sugar." It eventually became filed under the list of the villianous, unpronouncable ingredients, like potassium sulfate and sodium bicarbonate, that my mom constantly denounced but that still popped up in most everything, so I came to understand as unavoidable evils, like cancer, or homework.

It wasn't until I read the Omnivore's Dilemma in college that I got an idea of just how disruptive the ubiquitousness of high fructose corn syrup is both to the environment and to our health.

And, even my mom, the devoted health nut, had a whole slew of offenders lurking in her refrigerator.

Lots of these items, like the chocolate syrup and the Oreo-bits were bought for special occasions and then squirreled away for years, I'd be willing to guess, until I brought them to light for this photo.

Others, though, are everyday items, and it appears as though the worst offenders are the condiments. Ketchup, barbecue sauce, pickles, etc. I actually remember the day I bought those sweet pickles. I searched the entire store thrice over, and could not believe that I could not buy a single jar of pickles that didn't contain high fructose corn syrup.

How cruel, as condiments are just about the hardest to replace with homemade or at least person-made equivalents. In fact, that's probably exactly why condiments are the last bastion of high fructose corn syrup in our refrigerator. There's no simple alternative.

Case in point: I got super-excited to share a family recipe for homemade barbecue sauce that is utterly delicious, until I realized that the first ingredient is ketchup. Womp-womp.

This isn't necessarily a problem for this project - worst comes to worst, I can live without ketchup for six weeks. But what if I want to get away from the processed over-sweetened goop they sell in the supermarket post-Lent? Well, you can buy these newfangled "all natural" versions of ketchup they sell now, but they still break the other two of the three rules listed today, and about a million other rules as well. And you can certainly try your hand at homemade ketchup, but it only keeps for about a month, and I use ketchup maybe once every two months. Also, to be blunt, it looks like a real bitch to make.

What does one do here? I'm a big believer in voting with my money, and I'm a little irked that there's no way for me to cast my vote here, even if I wanted to. Part of me, the rational part of me, says, Ya know, you can't win them all. You don't even eat ketchup that much, so when you do, just buy the crap in the bottle.

But then the other part of me, the part that thought this project was a good idea in the first place, says, Don't let the man win!!!

What do you think? What would you do? Would you stick to your guns, no matter how it might affect your ketchup consumption? Or would you accept the fact that as long as the food industry exists as we know it, long lists of "edible foodlike substances" will eventually worm their way into our lives - an inevitable evil, like I once believed?