Eat This While You Read That: Mark Wandrey

You know, usually with an ETWYRT meal it's fun. I enjoy the process of cooking, and photographing. Preparing, staging, and shooting Mark's meal made me giggle like a madwoman, much to the amusement of the First Reader, although once he realized what Mark had given me, and what I planned to do, he was making suggestions and chortling himself. 

You see, Mark Wandrey's latest book is a tale of the zombie apocalypse. A Time to Die is one of many ZA books, but rather than trying to convince you why you should read this one, I'll let Mark's words speak for themselves. He didn't just send me a recipe, he sent me on a quest. 

For a good zombie apocalypse, food choice is everything. You need a good combination of something that can be foraged, easily produced in the desired environment, and manageable.

My choice for this situation is to head for comfort food. I mean, when you are running and gunning through a ZA, you are having a lot of fun, and you don’t want your dining choices to cause you to realize you just did a double tap on George next door who’d been over for dinner last week!

What says comfort food more than a good grilled cheese sandwich?

When you have a few minutes and no zeds are in view, head for the best place to find some good scrounge. The local dollar store will do. Hopefully it’s only been a few days, so you can grab a loaf of sour dough (the writers preferred), but if that fails screw it, go full on Wonderbread. That stuff was basically designed to survive the end of the world. When future archeologists are digging up the remains of our society, they’ll fine excellent examples of Twinkies, and Wonderbread. Both likely still edible.

Okay, you got the bread. Next is of course cheese. You’re thinking, the power went out 2 days (or 2 weeks) ago, no way the cheese survived. But you’re not thinking end of the world, dude. Head to the cooking isle of that dollar store, and nab a cylinder of Velveeta! Booha, that stuff will be on the museum display in 5 millennia, right next to that Twinkie and the half eaten loaf of Wonderbread. Add a jar of mayo to the mix, and a can of tomatoes (sliced preferably, but we can go with diced in a pinch).

Some of my, ah, foraged ingredients. Also, the first teeny tomato from my garden.

Finally, head over to the liquor isle. All the good stuff and cheap beer are long gone, but we don’t want either for this delectable number we’re working on. We want an average, good to sip red wine. Grab the first bottle you find, or even better, one of the ‘wine in a can’ varieties you see from time to time!

We’re half way there. Onto camping, nab a cheap little propane camp stove or an cylinder of propane. They’ll also have a Teflon coated frying pan. Now just a quick trip to the nearest fast food place. Oh sure, that’s been thoroughly looted. Something about an apocalypse just makes people want to clean out the nearest KFC. Go figure. While they’ve taken all the little bucket deserts and frozen chicken, what they didn’t take was the packets of butter. Don’t worry, they’re fine. They aren’t really butter anyway. Kind of like that Twinkie and Wonderbread. Grab a couple mayo packets (see the butter) in case that had been looted out of the dollar store, and you’re ready to roll.

All this scavenging has probably drawn a few zeds, so give them the slip or pop a few brains, it’ll help work up an appetite. After you’re all clear, get a safe spot and fire up that grill. Butter the bread on one side and get it toasting. Add mayo on the upside.  Slice the Velveeta thin (or thick, it’s a ZA so go for it) and put a piece on each side. Now get those tomatoes and put it on one side.

Delicious, hot, melty.... handy to grab and scoot!

Grab your ka-bar (make sure no zombie blood, that could be bad) and check under it. Once it’s starting to brown flip the side without the tomatoes onto the other side. Watch it warm, flip a couple times as it does until the cheese melts thoroughly. While you’re doing that fill your canteen wit that red wine.

Bingo, you’re done! You have a tasty portable meal ready to run and gun your way to your stronghold, or just to have a fun dance with the zeds. Remember, go easy on the wine unless you’re in safe territory! Enjoy

So rich, warm, toasty... the tomato complements the cheese beautifully.

We skipped the wine, as this was lunch, and not being the ZA, I have some proprieties to observe! As you can see, we were ready for anything that might pop out of the bushes while we chomped down some grub.

Zombie Apocalypse Gourmet.

Just don't let the melty cheese distract you...

You can find the index page for ETWYRT here, and the facebook group where we chat about recipes and reading here.