Friday, November 13, 2009

Turkey cheeseburger recipe

Courtesy of Telarus:

1 lb. ground turkey
1 orange bell pepper (cut into small 2-3 cm squares)
1/4 onion, minced
3 cloves garlic, smashed
1 egg

Mix well, form into 4 patties, sear on med-high (2 min each side). Bake for 4-6 minutes (melt cheese during the last 2 min).

Serve on pub-style buns with tomato/lettuce/pickles, stone ground mustard, ketchup (mayo if you're into that), etc, etc.

The $1 cheeseburger causes strife

I thought this article was interesting:

Food fight: Burger King franchisees sue chain



CHICAGO (AP) -- Burger King franchisees sued the hamburger company this week over its $1 double cheeseburger promotion, saying they're losing money on the deal and the company can't set maximum menu prices.

The National Franchise Association, a group that represents more than 80 percent of Burger King's U.S. franchise owners, said the $1 promotion forces restaurant owners to sell the quarter-pound burger with at least a 10-cent loss.
While costs vary by location, the $1 double cheeseburger typically costs franchisees at least $1.10, said Dan Fitzpatrick, a Burger King franchisee from South Bend, Ind. who is a spokesman for the association. That includes about 55 cents for the cost of the meat, bun, cheese and toppings. The remainder typically covers expenses such as rent, royalties and worker wages.
"New math, or old math, the math just doesn't work," Fitzpatrick said.
After testing the $1 deal in markets across the country, the discounted burger went on sale nationwide last month even though franchise owners, who operate 90 percent of the company's 12,000 locations, twice rejected the product because of its expense.

Sunday, November 1, 2009

Now that I'm done

I no longer remember why I started this. It seems exquisitely pointless, but maybe that's my post-Halloween hangover talking.

I feel a delicate sense of loss, of disappointment. Maybe I'll miss the cheeseburgers.

All I want to do today is eat fried chicken and broccoli, drink a little bourbon, and write until I'm done.

Saturday, October 31, 2009

Day thirty

THANK GOD, IT'S ALMOST OVER.

At six o-clock this evening I will be done with cheeseburgers. Maybe not forever, but for a while. I will gorge myself on sushi! Oh man. I miss sushi. And hard-boiled eggs. Boiled eggs are my favorite; they're like chicken candy.

Day twenty-nine

It was a  frenzy of costume-hunting and pumpkin-carving.

I have a cold sore. This is the first time in ten years that my cold sore has erupted, which means that either it's due to the intense stress I've been under or it's due to the cheeseburgers. Maybe both? Anyway, it's stupid and I'm not a happy panda. I'm having a party tonight and I wanted to make out but now I can't. :(

Thursday, October 29, 2009

I WAKE UP

CRAVING BLOOD AND ENTRAILS

AND BROCCOLI






:(

Day twenty-eight

RAW GODDAMN BEEF FOR BREAKFAST

AND A BURGERVILLE PEPPER BACON SOME KIND OF SON OF A BITCH FOR LUNCH

AND MORE FUCKING RAW MEAT FOR DINNER

FUCK YES

NOTHING CAN STOP ME NOW

Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Countdown

Only a few more days until I can eat all of the sweet, sweet vegetables I want!

DINNER




It's burger. And it has cheese in it. Ergo, cheeseburger. This may be the only thing I eat for the rest of the month.


Day twenty-seven

Oh, the end! So near!

I have exhausted my raw meat resources, not to mention my buns, so I will have to head to the store to pick up dinner. Perhaps I will remember to take pictures of my delicious Cheeseburger Tartare before I devour it.

God, I can't wait to eat something else.

FWIW, I'm digestively in tip-top shape and feel pretty decent, despite the prodigious amounts of wine I drank last night while watching "Pootie Tang".

Tuesday, October 27, 2009

Day twenty-six

While delaying the inevitable first cheeseburger of the day as long as I possibly could, I was contemplating the reasons that, say, a cheese and steak sandwich sounds delicious but another cheeseburger sounds abhorrent even though they are essentially the same thing. I concluded that a large part of it is that burgers are inevitably cooked all to hell because everyone's so afraid of e. coli and parasites and stuff these days.

Well now. I don't afraid of any e. coli! This I can do something about, right? So I walked to the store, procured ingredients, and constructed a dish which I am calling "Cheeseburger Tartare":

Take about a cup of very lean ground beef (or mince up some bottom round) and mix it with a couple of tablespoons of minced onion. You could add a raw egg and/or maybe some parsley, for variety, though I didn't this time.

Place on two halves of a French roll or maybe some slices of baguette. Whatever.

Sprinkle lightly with salt and pepper. Top with a slice of the cheese of your choice. Cheddar is remarkably good with this, as is the leftover Cana de Cabra my friend left here the other night. Limburger, surprisingly, not so much.

Toast in the toaster oven for about one minute, or JUST long enough for the cheese to become translucent. The beef should still be bright red.

Consume with a shot of whiskey, just in case the confidence in your digestive system to handle anything you put in it is unfounded.


Tonight I'm going to Jack In The Box for a Sourdough Jack. I still like those.

Monday, October 26, 2009

Day twenty-five

The only thing I really have to say at this point is thank god there are only five days left.

Sunday, October 25, 2009

Day twenty-four

It's more and more difficult to eat cheeseburgers. I had a cheeseburger crisis tonight, and drove around and around trying to decide whether to go get a cheeseburger. I eventually did go to Burgerville, which is not as cheap as the other fast-food joints but definitely higher quality.

And now I have a confession to make.

Today, I ate a piece of fried chicken.

It was good.

It was so

fucking

good.

Day twenty-three

Once again, nothing happened yesterday and I forgot to blog.

Friday, October 23, 2009

Day twenty-two

The funny thing is, even though I try to consolidate purchases and buy three cheeseburgers at a time, and I don't always eat fast-food cheeseburgers, the receipts start to stack up in my car like birthday confetti.

I'm back on the Burger King doubles, currently the best penny-to-calorie ratio I've seen yet. They're pretty gummy, and require extra pickles, IMO, to make them really palatable.

I'm feeling a bit better, went on a housecleaning spree this morning, and just watched parts 1 and 2 of the Star Wars Holiday Special. My plan was to see the whole thing through, but it's less doable than 30 days of cheeseburgers. It's funny for a few minutes, and then eventually it gives you a stomachache and diarrhea.

Thursday, October 22, 2009

Day twenty-one

I'm sick again. :( I couldn't eat my cheeseburger last night and was wondering if I was at the end... if maybe I just couldn't eat any more cheeseburgers. But then I went out and my date was eating something that should have smelled delicious but instead smelled completely unappetizing, and every mention of food just sounded horrible. And then he had to go home sick with an upset stomach, and I went home and found myself shivering and sweating again.

Since we are both sick, and there is good reason to suspect I got this from him, I am going to declare it non-cheeseburger-related. I am not really sure what I'm going to eat until I get better, because I am definitely not eating cheeseburgers. Maybe beef broth mixed with cheese soup. Maybe I will feel better by lunchtime. Double cheeseburgers are $1 at Burger King again. I want to be better by tonight because I'd like to go out, but I'm kind of skeptical.

Wednesday, October 21, 2009

OH

I forgot to mention that I weighed myself this morning and I've lost about five pounds since I started this. Obviously I wouldn't recommend it as a weight-loss plan but it's reassuring that I didn't just blimp right up like a lot of friends were afraid I would.

Day twenty

Only ten more days until I can have Thai food! Praise the lard. This morning I cheated a little and ate some beet greens. They just looked so...  tender. Green. Delicious. I am telling myself that counts toward the lettuce portion of my cheeseburger.

The chili-cheeseburger this morning was pretty good, but I am going to have to go back to the magical wonder that is the mushroom-swiss-avocado burger for dinner.

I have a swollen tear duct. Cheeseburger-related? Possibly! But probably not.

Tuesday, October 20, 2009

Lunchtime

Mushrooms! Swiss! Avocado! Fuck yes!

BEST DIET EVER

I just did that thing with my fingers, like Mr. Burns.

Day nineteen

Much better today... I'm working up a storm in the name of getting caught up. Avocado cheddar burger for breakfast - oh man, yum! Best idea ever.

My friend The Good Reverend Roger had this to day today, in reply to my question about how to get undamaged from life:

"You don't.  You jam some spackle in the cracks, wear your scars proudly, and smack a motherfucker down. Anyone who makes it to their grave with an unbroken heart was dead long before they got buried."

I love that guy. Seriously. He is my spiritual advisor, even though he also told me to "knock off the damn cheeseburgers".

There's nothing that says I have to take every piece of advice from my spiritual advisor.

Monday, October 19, 2009

Day eighteen

Uneventful morning. I slept in, ate half a cheeseburger, made an appointment for my house to be appraised, and have commenced a painting of the eyeless moustachiod man-pig from my dream, on the advice of my friend's husband.

Day seventeen

Oh fuck. What day is it? It's not day seventeen at all. I missed a day!

Yesterday was LAME. OK, not in every possible way, but fairly lame anyway. I was riding out my malaise, and breakfasted upon half a cheeseburger in the morning, then went to a friend's house to help her and her boyfriend paint just the south side in order to qualify for the FHA loan they're trying to get. It went beautifully, actually, in the way manual labor with a clear visible reward is beautiful, and I had a few beers, forgetting all about the other half of my cheeseburger until quite a bit later. I was also going through (possibly irrational?) anxieties about not at all receiving any phone call from a particular gentleman - being ill/tired/stressed makes me feel very vulnerable. I went home, ate cheeseburger soup, continued to not receive any phone calls, and then tried to sleep. I couldn't sleep. I drank some wine.

No sleeping.

More wine. A Benadryl.

No sleeping. A spate of crying.

Then there was sending heartbroken text messages to my friend in Arizona, who was, of course, asleep.


Some days, I feel like such a girl.

Saturday, October 17, 2009

In pursuit of sleep

I have consumed a bowl of cheeseburger soup, a glass of wine, a Tylenol, and a Benadryl.

I have developed intense, prickly itching around my face and throat. There is really no explanation for this. My temperature is close to normal again; 98.2. The sweating has not recurred. The fathers have swooped in and taken away their children from the house of plague. I really cannot be anything but grateful for this, although I worry about the one's wife, who is expecting and I do not want her to be infected. I slept most of the afternoon, and have no recollection of dreaming.

I am definitely not rational right now, and keep having thoughts which have little basis in reality. I would blame a fever, if I had one. Have I mentioned that this is the stupidest illness ever? I hate it. I have been much sicker in the past, but I have never been so surreally sick. I heard voices downstairs earlier... but then, I also heard a cacophony of wailing from outside my bedroom window this morning, and a dog on the ceiling barking. I am dizzy and at some point I seem to have fallen, as I am bruised on my left shoulder and hip. I do not remember falling. Maybe I fell out of bed. My sense of spatial relationships is uniquely fucked, in a way it is never fucked. I am normally a spatial relationships ninja. It's what I DO.

I AM PRETTY SURE THIS IS NOT CHEESEBURGER RELATED, YOU GUYS.

On some level I am enjoying the shit out of having, or at least documenting, a mystery malaise that is unlike anything I have ever had before. It's a unique experience, right? An adventure. On the other hand all I want to do is feel good and make some beads and help paint my friend's house tomorrow.

Day sixteen

Last night was a curious hell of nausea and headaches punctuated by chills, profuse sweating, aural hallucinations, and bizarre dreams. Soft pink eyeless pigs with human faces and moustaches. A friend in a ramshackle outdoor kitchen, cooking giant cabbages infested with huge clumps of tiny orange maggots which at first looked like clusters of flowers. An old lady offering to share her raw cocktail shrimp. A space cowboy peering though the dirty window of the tiny room in which I was sleeping next to some still figure, wanting to come in.

Sweat was pouring off of my skin as if I was in a sauna, pooling between my breasts and dripping down my ribcage... I soaked my sheets and 2 T-shirts with it. The third shirt stayed fairly dry and I slept OK between 5 and 8 am. The funny thing is that I don't have a fever, at all... in fact my temperature dropped a couple of degrees. It's almost back to normal now, but I don't feel right.

I ate half a cheeseburger for breakfast. My stomach wants no more to do with that. I might make more cheeseburger soup for dinner though, just in case I feel up for it.

Friday, October 16, 2009

When life gives you the malaise

...make cheeseburger soup. Perfect for the cheeseburger enthusiast with swine malaise or other sorrowful, appetite-destroying illness.
http://www.cheese-burger.net/recipes/cheeseburger-soup-recipes.html

Illness

I totally have the swine flu. Or a swine cold. Or maybe swine malaise. Whatever I have, it is not making me happy. It is making me tired and achy. I do not want a cheeseburger. I do not want even one. I do not want the delicious chili I am making for the children. I want to curl up in that not-very-comfortable bed which I do not hate at all, and sleep and sleep until I feel better.

Instead I will wait until it is a reasonable hour and then I will curl up in my own very, very comfortable big lonesome bed, and sleep until morning stops me from sleeping any more.

Actual True Fact:

This expensive extra-lean organic ground beef is nowhere near as delicious as the regular cheap fatty kind.

Day fifteen

This morning, on the way to the store for meat and lettuce, I saw a bumper sticker that said "I'M NOT SURE ABOUT JOHN TRAVOLTA ANYMORE".

So, here I am halfway through, and frankly I feel like crap today. I don't know if I have a virus or what, but I'm kind of headachy and tired. I had a five-hour nap yesterday, and I never nap... I just couldn't be awake anymore. Went to bed early last night, too.

Thursday, October 15, 2009

Oh good

I looked at my phone logs and I made quite a few outgoing phone calls in the midst of last night's food-deprived euphoria. FABULOUS. I am both dismayed and intrigued.

Day fourteen

Is it possible that there is a correlation between cheeseburgers and erratic behavior? I forgot to eat again last night. It's a difficult thing to remember when there is no differentiation between meals. Luckily my kids found me hilarious, and my friend talked to me on the phone for an hour as I rambled. It is possible that the boy with whom I am smitten found the approximately 500 garbled texts I sent him less charming.

Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Day thirteen

So my body seems to have stopped registering "hunger". I think this may be why I forgot to eat the other night. The same thing  happened and persisted for several months after I had each of my children... rather than "hunger" I just felt "some kind of mild discomfort" and then I would have to figure out what it was. Am I cold? No. Do I have to pee? No. Oh wait, have I eaten today? No! That must be it!

So basically I'm saying that cheeseburgers = childbirth.

In other news, the rolls I bought yesterday were moldy today. I was so irritated.

Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Day twelve

I did something terribly stupid last night, and embarrassed the hell out of myself.

How is this burger-related, you may be asking? Well, let me tell you.

To start with, I'm hypoglycemic. This is not normally a problem, because it's easily resolved by eating all the time. Which is exactly what I usually do, and I think I have not had a full-blown hypoglycemic episode since this one time in 1994 when I was on a road trip with my boyfriend and we went through this epic stretch of, oh god, I think it might have been Wyoming, where there was nothing but green rocks and no food and by the time we got to a place where there was food I was FREAKING OUT sobbing hysterically, and my poor boyfriend must have been thinking "Oh shit, I have another two weeks in the car with this psycho". But then I had a sandwich (a BLT, god bless it) and everything was fine, and we kept snacks in the car after that.Well, fine except for the Grand Canyon episode, which I don't really remember clearly but it involved an egg salad sandwich on marble rye.

Anyway, my daily routine usually involves a great deal of eating, but I'm pretty much only eating two cheeseburgers a day because that's about all I can manage. Because of the huge amount of protein, my glucose stays pretty stable between meals, but last night I forgot to eat dinner and I had a belly dancing lesson to be at, so I grabbed a cheese stick and proceeded to forget all about eating anything else. After belly dancing, we sat around and sipped whiskey and had girl talk (if you define girl talk as being primarily about finances, investing, mortgages, crazy relatives, and home improvement) and then I went home. And the wind picked up.

I am childishly, irrationally terrified of high winds. It's really pretty stupid. I used to have nightmares about trees falling on the house and branches crashing through my ceiling and killing me. I always assumed that it was something I'd picked up from TV, maybe an episode of The Waltons or something, but then one day when was 30 years old and I looked like crap from not sleeping all night my mom told me that when I was five the 200-foot-tall Douglas Fir in our backyard had dropped a branch during a windstorm, a tremendous thundering limb ten inches thick, and it crashed through the roof into my bedroom, and I've been having nightmares ever since. What the hell. It seems like maybe I could have used, I don't know, therapy or something. I guess people didn't do that in the seventies.

So last night the wind picked up. My bedroom window faces the branches of a rather gorgeous (and probably too small to be lethal if it fell on the house) hemlock, which the wind rushes through in a wonderfully dramatic, terrifying manner. I was drunk, and had forgotten about eating, and I started freaking the fuck out. Normally I tolerate high winds at night fairly well, where "fairly well" means curling into a fetal position and weeping in my pillow. Back in the days when I had a husband, I would cling to him and shiver until I fell asleep, but now there is no husband, and I haven't been alone at night during high winds for about seven years.

I got up and went downstairs and started calling people, which is always a great idea when it's 11:30 on Monday night and you're drunk and having a hypoglycemia-fueled freakout. I called one of my friends once and another of my friends twice, with no answer, and then I hit on the completely brilliant idea of calling this boy who is, oh for fuck's sake, someone I am completely taken with. Because there's nothing more fetching than discovering via being woken up by midnight phone call that a seemingly competent girl you've been seeing is drunk, hysterical, and afraid of air. On the third call, he answers, and I proceed to say I DON'T KNOW WHAT except that I recall being completely unreasonable and telling him that I hate his bed, which is not true although it is not the most comfortable bed. In fact, I love his bed, because it is his and it smells like him and has him in it.

He talked to me until I was ready to fall asleep. Which was very kind. And this morning, having eaten my cheeseburger, I am horribly, awfully, crushingly embarrassed.

Monday, October 12, 2009

Day eleven

This is all really turning out to be terribly uneventful.

Last night's chicken and dumplings were very well-received, although some dismay was expressed that I had already eaten and did not even bring a leftover cheeseburger for myself. However, I was quite full, and it was very pleasurable to watch the dumpling recipient slowly, carefully devour a bowl of soup. We also watched the internet on television. Did you know they have the internet on television? Well, they do.

Sunday, October 11, 2009

POOP LOG 2

Just kidding. Everything's normal.

SORRY, PROFESSOR CRAMULUS.

Day ten

The mountain trip was cancelled, rendering moot the question of how to manage lunch. For breakfast I had yet another Limburger burger, and right now I am omnomnoming a mozzarella burger.

Last night, I went to a party and one of my friends arrived wearing THIS:

http://www.threadless.com/product/783/Inside_You

I am so envious! I need this shirt! Alas, it is sold out and I cannot have it. Please add yourself to the waiting list for this shirt, so that they will re-print it and I can have one!

I was able to survive the chicken soup and cake and pizza without undue temptation. Right now I am midway through prep of dumplings with minced basil, chives and parsley, which I will shortly be taking elsewhere for comsuption by elseone.

Saturday, October 10, 2009

Day nine

I woke up this morning with a piece of candy stuck to my belly. This has nothing to do with cheeseburgers, but I thought it was pretty funny.

I am really stuck on these Limburger cheeseburgers. I just ate my 5th one, and I'm still torn between having another one for dinner, or mixing it up and having a mozzerella/parmesan cheeseburger with marinara sauce. I need to make up my mind pretty soon, though.

Tomorrow's going to bring a special challenge, as I'm going on a short road trip to Mt. St. Helen. I can't decide; fast-food burgers picked up on the way and stored in the back seat until needed? Or make some delicious homemade ones, but as component parts, and assemble them as cold sandwiches? I have until morning to decide... also that might all depend on how many beers I have at my friend's party tonight. Frankly, I hate hangovers (unlike all of you other people who LOVE them), so I'm not planning to overindulge, but sometimes the allure of friends and beer leads to lapsed judgment and staying up too late for just ONE more beer, and the combination of one more beer and sleep deprivation leads to the morning turning into a spinning, ear-ringing, waking hell. And if that happens, fast food might be all I'm capable of.

Friday, October 9, 2009

Day eight

Another Limburger burger for breakfast. I swear,  these things are ridiculous! I minced some parsley, chives, and basil from my garden and mixed them into the meat. ZOMG TASTAY.

I am holding steady at about two burgers a day. There is no way this comes close to 2000 calories, but I have no desire to eat more than two cheeseburgers... or really, any desire to eat anything else, for that matter. I'm down another pound, which was not the point of this experiment at all. I have added beer to my beverage menu, to try to make up some of the missing calories, and also because beer is delicious and goes well with cheeseburgers.

My digestive system seems to have normalized.

I just now baked a chocolate cake, and am preparing to make chicken soup. It is the first time I have made anything delicious that was not a cheeseburger since I started this, so we'll see how difficult it is to resist temptation.

Thursday, October 8, 2009

Oh my god

I had to have another Limburger burger for dinner, it was so damn fantastic.

Day seven

One full week of cheeseburgers! So far, so good. For breakfast I'm having a Limburger burger, which is absolute, sheer delectable perfection.

Last night I went to a gallery opening that some of my friends had pieces in, and at some point the cheeseburger thing was brought up. Some guy I had never met before was very into it, and said that I should have had a cheeseburger-related piece in the show. I said "I'm not sure what kind of piece I could do" and he said that I should have just walked around the show eating a cheeseburger. Performance art. I really love the idea that eating a cheeseburger could be art. It's beautiful.

"What are you doing for lunch?"

"I'M PERFORMING ART! With a cheeseburger, and my cheeseburger-hole!"

Some random internet person suggested a Greek cheeseburger, with feta. I love you, random internet person!

Wednesday, October 7, 2009

Dinner... time?

Tonight, I can't seem to bring myself to eat. Granted, I had an oversized breakfast and a really late lunch, but I should be hungry and my body is just saying, nuh-uh honey, don't even try.

Cheeseburger cheating

Not really cheating, but because I ate roughly twice as much meat as usual for breakfast this morning, for lunch I skipped the meat and had cheese with lettuce, tomato and pickle on a bun for lunch. It was kind of a nice change of pace.

Day six

Last night I finally broke down and purchased cheeseburger ingredients. I got four pounds of 80% lean ground beef, two cheap packages of whole-wheat buns, a jar of sliced pickles, lettuce, and, for added excitement, some mushrooms and Swiss cheese. I already have tomatoes and onions coming out of my ears.

Last night's dinner was DELICIOUS.

I  then accompanied my friend Sean to The County Cork, my neighborhood pub, and watched him eat a cheeseburger. We both burst out laughing when our server asked if he wanted cheese, and then I tried not to be bashful while Sean explained why... she was quite interested, actually, and didn't immediately seem to think I was crazy. Their cheeseburgers are huge; usually when I eat there I take half home for the next meal. (I highly recommend the one with mushrooms and swiss, by the way. OMG yum!) Sean polished off the whole thing in a ridiculously short amount of time and then patiently waited for me to finish my beer.

This morning, freed from the grim spectre of eating a reheated fast-food burger, I minced some parsley, onion, and tomato and mixed it into a fistful of ground beef along with salt, pepper, and an egg, grilled it on the stove, topped it with cheese, and am eating bites of it in between fits of typing. Ideally, I'd be eating it on grilled sourdough, but a girl has to take what she can get.

My stomach seems to be handling this whole situation remarkably well. The initial bloated sensation seems to have passed and my digestion is completely normal. I also appear to have lost three pounds.

Tuesday, October 6, 2009

Cheeseburger fantasies

I have an Italian-themed dinner party to attend next week, and I'm going to make burgers seasoned with fresh basil and crushed garlic, served on a garlic-butter grilled sourdough roll with marinara, mozzarella, parmesan, and tomato. I'm also contemplating, for a future event, Mexican cheeseburgers, seasoned with cumin and cocoa and served on savory cornbread with jack, fresh cilantro and chopped onion, with green sauce and lime on the side.

I wonder if I can make Thai cheeseburgers work somehow. I bet I can.

I really need someone to cook for. Like, a friend who throws a lot of dinner parties.

POOP LOG

You knew it was coming. No, there will not be pictures... sorry, Professor Cramulus.

So my digestive system usually runs like a well-oiled machine, if you get my drift. I am into and out of the bathroom in under sixty seconds 99% of the time. I typically eat a lot of vegetables, and it keeps things moving pretty well.

Needless to say, cheeseburgers do not have this effect. For one thing, I am only pooping maybe every other day rather than my usual twice daily, and when I do go, it pellets out reluctantly, like shy bunnies at a shooting range. I am anticipating that part of this is simply due to the abrupt dietary change, and I can expect it to, um, even up a bit in a week or so. In the meantime I am drinking SO MUCH water.

Also, my farts smell like cheese.

Day five

Yesterday I went to Jack In The Box and splurged on a Sourdough Jack, which had a generous helping of surprisingly good tomatoes and 670 calories. I also got three Hamburger Deluxes with cheese, 427 calories, $1.29 each. They were pretty decent and I kind of liked that the lettuce is one whole piece, although I'd almost just as soon dispense with the lettuce altogether, especially  the next day when it's all wilty. In fact, I think that in future I will.

I'm definitely starting to feel some side effects from the cheeseburger diet... I feel kind of full all the time, and a bit gassy.

Now that I have defended the cheeseburger from allegations of having magical powers to make people fat and sick, cheeseburger detractors (why don't you bastards post your comments here? Don't you realize that is the point of the blog?) seem to have decided to deliberately misconstrue what I'm saying, and accused me of claiming that a cheeseburger diet is GOOD FOR YOU.

OK. No. For fuck's sake, I wouldn't have ever wondered what it would feel like to eat absolutely nothing but cheeseburgers if I thought it was good for you. And no, also I am not trying to emulate the conditions that homeless people live in. I spent part of my childhood in hungry, horrible poverty and have no desire to experience that again. I should probably be a good two inches taller, but I was malnourished from about 11 to about 13 and my development didn't go quite right because of it. So, I kind of feel like I've done that, it's out of the way, I have no need to recreate it. I'm just intrigued by the idea of what it feels like to live on cheeseburgers and piss a bunch of people off.

Monday, October 5, 2009

Cheeseburger haters

I am very much enjoying the reactions of those around me to the fact that I'm eating nothing but cheeseburgers. It's very revealing, how intense the mythology is around them as the ultimate junk food. There is a lot of urban legend surrounding them... it's "common knowledge" that they're really fatty, that the meat is filled with preservatives, that it's mostly soy filler, that there's so much sodium in them that you'll go into renal failure if you eat them regularly... none of these things are true, at least not of the BK ones and probably not of the majority of fast-food places. Of course, there's also a weird ingrained belief in Americans that beef is bad for you, and that chicken is good for you. It's very odd, and pretty much nonsensical.

The poor maligned BK cheeseburger is actually nowhere near as awful as most people assume. The meat is just ground beef... there's nothing in it, no preservatives, no seasonings, it's just cooked to holy hell, which also means much of the fat is cooked out of it. The cheese is your basic American slice. The bun is the worst part, but no worse than any .99 sack of preservative-filled white bread from the grocery store. Nutritionally, other than the lack of fiber, it's surprisingly adequate. I'm allowing myself to add unlimited condiments, including typical burger vegetables, so my vitamin C won't be lacking. I'm getting plenty of protein and amino acids, and even calcium from the cheese. Which I looked up, and was surprised to find is actual American cheese made out of real milk, not that adulterated "cheese food" crap.

It seems like I am spending a lot of time defending the cheeseburger. I'm probably repeating myself, too. I'll stop! Cheeseburger haters can SUCK IT.

Day four

I woke up at 4:30 am, starving. Last night for dinner, with wanton abandonment of the spirit of Cheeseburger Experiment yet obeying the letter of it, I had an $8 cheeseburger at the Red Fox. I asked for cheddar instead of blue cheese, but I got blue cheese anyway. I love the Red Fox with a sweet, abiding adoration that transcends time, space, and even disappointing hot dogs, but customizing a food order there is a special challenge. Anyway, it was an excellent cheeseburger served medium-rare on a brioche roll, it was damn tasty, and fortunately I still have half of it reheating in the toaster oven right now. I went on a long hike yesterday on my favorite trail (I have an ongoing love affair with this trail), and I will need to remember to purchase additional cheeseburgers when I do things like that.

I got a text last night that Jack in the Box has $1 cheeseburgers. I know where I'm going for lunch.

Sunday, October 4, 2009

Day three

A number of people have expressed concern/conviction that a month of cheeseburgers will result in obesity and/or malnourishment. I have to say, I think that the cheeseburger has gotten a bad rap. The cheeseburger does not make a man fat. Eating too many cheeseburgers might make a man fat, but is that is the fault of the cheeseburger, or is it the fault of the man? Do not punish the cheeseburger for the sins of the man! I am, at the moment, a fairly trim and muscular man of the female persuasion, and I am watching my caloric intake. I would have to eat five Whopper Jrs with cheese EVERY DAY just to maintain my weight, assuming I did not drink any beverages with caloric content such as beer or whiskey, which I most assuredly am going to be doing. I might even be doing it right now, at 1:23 on a Sunday afternoon.

That's FIVE cheeseburgers a day, folks. I can't eat five cheeseburgers a day. I am pretty effectively shut down after three, and that leaves me room for a few whiskeys, and still be below break-even. I tried to eat four yesterday, and that fourth one just sat and stared at me all evening. I couldn't do it. I had it for breakfast instead.

As for malnutrition... come on, honey. That's a kneejerk reaction to the word "cheeseburger" if I ever saw one. In a cheeseburger we have meat, cheese, bread, and, depending on the burger, a small assortment of vegetation. A Whopper Jr. has a pretty substantial pile of pickles, onions, tomato, and the mostly-throwaway iceburg lettuce, while a standard cheeseburger has only ketchup, pickles, and onions, but we are still looking at a pretty decent representation of all the food groups. I wouldn't want to live on them for a year, but over a month I'm most certainly not going to develop scurvy.

The other criticism I've gotten from certain people is that others have done this, better, more entertainingly, under more controlled circumstances, under the care of a doctor. To these people I say, why do you hate fun? I know no one but my immediate, angry friends and family will read this blog. I know this experiment is not going to result in a paper that will be published in any scientific journal. That is not the point. The point is that I, me, all by myself, am curious about what it feels like to eat cheeseburgers for one month. What will it do to my body? Reading someone else's paper or watching someone else's movie won't tell me that. The only way for me to feel it is for me to do it. It's like a grand adventure! Besides, I really like the word "cheeseburger" and I am getting a lot of insight into the prejudice our society has against cheeseburgers. It's unjust. Cheeseburgers are not evil. They are, for example, a great deal more nutritious per calorie than your average fried chicken sandwich. I bet if I said I was living on chicken sandwiches for a month people wouldn't have had such a strong, visceral negative reaction. But the word "cheeseburger" evokes something in people; an image of grease, gluttony, and valueless calories. Well, cheeseburger, I don't believe that about you. I think you are cute.

Also, I finally pooped yesterday, and it was fine. Haters.

Saturday, October 3, 2009

Day two

I just happened to get my labwork back from my annual physical today; for the record, my "bad" cholesterol is 103, which is toward the high end of healthy, but my "good" cholesterol is at 80, which is fabulous. This information is really not going to be useful, though, because I'm not planning on having my cholesterol checked again in a month.

This morning I started off my day in bed with... oh, actually, let's just skip ahead to the hamburger. I pulled the vegetables off of one of yesterday's Whopper Jrs, scraped off the cum-wad of mayonnaise, and reheated it in the toaster oven. It was not so bad.

For lunch I headed back to Burger King, where I was saddened to find that the 2-fer special had ended. They have the Whopper Jr. for $1, though, so I ordered three of them with cheese, hold the mayo. Then, curious, I headed to McDonald's to see what kind of calorie/dollar ratio I could find there. The basic cheeseburger was a dollar, so I ordered two.

For $1.25, a Whopper Jr. with cheese has 420 calories. This really doesn't touch the calorie value of the double cheeseburger special, which, at 550 calories for $1.11 each, was clearly the most economical option. Sadly, those days are over and it's time to move on. The McDonald's cheeseburger, meanwhile, offers a mere 300 calories for $1. The Burger King single cheeseburger (which I have yet to try) has 340 calories for, I think, 99 cents.

The calorie-per-penny breakdown:
BK double cheeseburger special: 4.95 calories per penny (!)
BK single cheeseburger: 3.43 calories per penny
BK Whopper Jr. w/cheese: 3.36 calories per penny
McD single cheeseburger: 3 calories per penny

Granted, I could get more calories per penny by eating a loaf of wonder bread or a block of lard, but, in theory anyway, a cheeseburger has enough nutritional value to not be a death sentence were one to eat them long-term.

The Whopper Jr. w/cheese is, without mayo, vastly more palatable. I did a side-by-side comparison of that and the McDonald's cheeseburger, which I augmented with additional pickles (they only put ONE SLICE on! Stingy bastards!) and a slice of tomato. Initially, I preferred the flavor of the McDonald's cheeseburger, which was distinctly "crackier", but after a few bites the bun seemed excessively sweet and doughy. Tomorrow I will have to experiment with the BK single cheeseburger.

McDonalds' website, by the way, is infuriatingly, unbelievably slow to load and I had to look up their nutritional information on a third-party website, so I could be wrong about the calories in their cheeseburger. Way to reinforce Burger King's marketing campaign, guys.

Eating two cheeseburgers for lunch is definitely a bad idea, and is not going to happen again. I feel gross.

For unknown reasons, I have not pooped for a few days. I don't think it has to do with the burgers, though.

Friday, October 2, 2009

It should be noted

Before I really get into this; according to the doctor's office yesterday, which I just coincidentally  happened to be at because of the spider bite, I weigh 148 lbs fully clothed, and have normal blood pressure. According to my scale at home I weigh 142 lbs stark naked.

Day one

I ate one cheeseburger yesterday, to acclimate myself to these things. I had never had a BK double cheeseburger before, and it was surprisingly sticky. I couldn't eat the whole thing, so I gave the last little bit to the chickens, who gobbled it up. I didn't feel entirely OK afterwards, but that could have been a combination of being hung-over and having been recently bitten by a poisonous spider.

Anyway.

I thought that the double cheeseburger was kind of gross, so I amended it with a slice of tomato from home. I think this is acceptable practice, because they have tomatoes at BK and if, say, I ordered a Whopper Jr. with cheese, it would have a tomato slice on it. Today was to be my first full day of the cheeseburger diet, but unfortunately it turns out they don't serve burgers before 11 am, so I had to scrounge some old chicken out of the fridge for breakfast, and went back for burgers this afternoon.

This is where I confess that I got my Whopper Jr. without cheese, because the idea of that sticky, sticky cheese was too much to face. I'm still working my way up to it.

I've decided that adding my own condiments is perfectly kosher for this experiment, because they are ridiculously stingy with the pickles. I mean, I know the thing only cost $1, I can't really complain, but hello, they're pickles. A precision-cut wafer-thin slice of pickle cannot possibly cost so much that they must restrict each burger to two.

The other thing is the mayo. It's disgusting. I like mayonnaise but I am not so fond of mayonnaise that I want it to spurt into my mouth with ejaculatory gusto every time I take a bite. I may have them leave it off, but is that cheating? I think the double cheeseburger doesn't have mayo, so perhaps this is reinforcement to stick with that.

I bought two extra Whopper Jrs, one for dinner and one for breakfast.

Day zero

So yesterday I took the kids and myself to the dentist. Afterward, we went to Burger King for a quick lunch before I dropped them off at school. We never, ever go to Burger King.

In the drive-through I noticed that they have a special with 2 double cheeseburgers for $2.22, and I thought to myself, damn, those are some cheap calories! And I started thinking about how, if I was really, really poor, I could probably survive on cheeseburgers. Then I wondered how, exactly, I would feel if I ate only cheeseburgers. Would my hair fall out? Would my mental facilities diminish? Would my skin become sallow? Would I get rickets?

Naturally, the only sane thing to do is to find out.