Today's Fast Food Experience

Today That Nice Boy I Married and I drove to Bardstown KY -- about two hours either way -- to buy a used deep freeze. Since we already have a big upright deep freeze, a small chest deep freeze, and a spare refrigerator with a freezer compartment, this may seem excessive to you. However, we've been wanting to buy a side of locally raised grass-fed beef, and will need the extra freezer space for that. Plus, we've got four meat-breed chickens that need to be, uh, processed; they're the size of Thanksgiving turkeys! And there was a truly humongous -- like 20-odd cubic feet -- chest freezer available for $125. So we spent the day driving through some really pretty parts of Kentucky.

Had breakfast before we went, of course. But by the time we were headed back, I was hungry. (TNBIM was not; he ate breakfast later than me, and anyway, he's always had a lighter appetite.) What there was on our route through Bardstown was a Burger King, so that's where I ate a late lunch/early supper.

Unlike many of the fast food joints, BK only has one main dish salad on the menu, though it does offer a choice of grilled or crispy chicken. Since "crispy" means "breaded," grilled will always be the low carb choice.

However, that wasn't really what I was in the mood for, so I ordered the garden salad (which is the same as the main dish salad, only without the chicken), and a Whopper, hold the bun. Confused the poor boy behind the cash register. Apparently, despite their "have it your way" slogan, the highly computerized registers at BK do not include a "hold the bun" button; the kid had to lean over the back counter and tell the cooks that I wanted the burger bunless. This confused them in their turn: "No bun? Where do I put the mayonnaise?" I suggested they put it right on the patty, along with the pickles, ketchup, tomato and onion. Which they did.

They hit on giving me my bun in a plastic bowl, which worked fine. My salad came in another plastic bowl, with a little insert on top with dividers in it. The top section contained about a half-dozen baby-cut carrots, a half-dozen grape tomatoes, and a handful of shredded cheese. Underneath was an ample quantity of lettuce -- romaine rather than iceberg, I'm pleased to report. Apparently the marketing gurus at Burger King central have calculated that giving the consumer the illusion of "making their own" salad by dumping the extra ingredients over the lettuce makes the whole thing seem... I dunno, more creative? Fresher? Something.

So I had a garden salad plus a Whopper with Cheese, no bun. I can't tell you the exact carb count, because -- again, despite the "have it your way" slogan -- the Burger King online menu calculator doesn't let one subtract the croutons from the salad. However, so far as I can tell, I got maybe 10 grams total carb, with 27 grams protein. Dunno how much fiber.

It was not a gourmet meal. That said, the salad was commendably fresh; not a rusty bit of lettuce in the bunch, nor a flabby tomato.

I'd also like to mention the dressing: I got the ranch dressing, the boring, predictable choice, but since it wasn't low fat, it seemed likely to be low in carbs. Reading the label, the first ingredient is soy oil, not a great thing. I'll take an extra fish oil capsule tonight to balance the omega-6 fatty acids in the dressing. The second ingredient, however, is buttermilk, which is a good thing. Then comes corn starch, not my favorite, and some thickeners and such. I should point out, however, that nowhere on the ingredient list do I find high fructose corn syrup; this is refreshing in a big-corporation fast-food packaged dressing. There is some sugar, but it's listed under the heading "contains 2% or less of...", and even then, it's number 8 on the list. There's not a lot of sugar in here.

So once again, I managed to get a reasonably healthful if uninspiring meal at a fast food joint. I just like to keep pointing out that it can be done.

Now to figure out how we're getting that immense freezer down the cellar stairs...