Oh My Sweet Carolina

Growing up in North Carolina, I wanted nothing more than to leave. It's a state with a beautiful coastline and majestic mountains. It's a state where the water allows one to dissolve more sugar than should be physically possible into the sweet tea. It's also a state where a sign reading, "The KKK Welcomes You To Johnston County" wasn't removed until the late 1980's. Give any angst-fueled Raleigh native a few years of breakfast sandwiches and New York traffic, and he'll start to forget about that last part. The overwhelming longing for a real biscuit distorts certain memories.

Cracker Barrel is a nationwide chain. There's even one in Maine, but no one worth his gravy would dare call something a "biscuit" in any state north of Virginia. Going here outside of the south is kind of like getting pizza in the Ukraine. If it's all you know, then I suppose ignorance is bliss. But if you grew up in North Carolina, then nothing but the real thing is worth the heartburn. Oh, the glorious heartburn. There are rocking chairs on that porch for a reason.

My dinner started as a BLT. For those of us uncomfortable with this vegetable-to-meat ratio, they let you add cheese and a chicken breast to it. I opted for grilled chicken. They'll also fry it, but that just seemed like playing Russian roulette with my arteries. Either way, the lettuce and tomato just seemed out of place at this point. So yes, I got a BLT and threw the LT under the bus. I mean, hey, there's no sense in pretending that there's anything redeeming left in this sandwich.

Aside from being able to drink unlimited quantities of Cheerwine, there's only one thing you need to know about Cook-Out: milkshake possibilities. Depending on the season, their menu contains 39-40 flavors, and they let you add as many as you dare. Practically speaking, this gets disgusting quickly. But if you think about the numbers, it's just impressive. A simple calculation* shows that with 39 add-ins (since vanilla is the base), there are about 550 BILLION unique milkshakes. Keep in mind, a quarter of those contain Hi-C and Peanut Banana.

Traditionally, I make the mistake of hitting up the first Bojangles I see in Virginia as I'm driving home. This results in 1) weaving down I-95 because I'm too wrapped up in reuniting with this lost love, and 2) going back almost every day I'm there, hoping to get my fill before I head back to New York. This time, I saved it for my last meal. One can actually go a lot of different directions with meat, potatoes and bread. Add a deep fryer to the mix, and there's really only one clear way to go. It's this, and it's perfection in a box.


* The Cook-Out milkshake computation

First, warm up with an easier problem: pretend you have only one add-in on the menu, say M&M's. You can choose to have M&M's or forgo M&M's, so you have two possible milkshakes. No magic there.

Now, pretend you have two add-ins, say M&M's and chocolate syrup. You first choose to have M&M's or omit them, which gives you two possibilities. For each of those possibilities, you can choose to add or omit chocolate syrup. That means for each of two choices you have two choices. Two choices times two choices gives you four possible milkshakes. Still reasonable, right?

[Exercise: Work out how many unique milkshake there are if you have three possible add-ins. If you guessed it's two times two times two = eight, you'd be correct. If you think I'm lying, write them out... it doesn't take that long. Or don't, because this is just a dumb blog.]

Now let's look at 39 add-ins. It works the same way. You can choose M&M's or no M&M's, you can choose Hi-C or no Hi-C, and so on. Multiplying two thirty nine times will take you a while, but Google can quickly tell you that the answer is 549,755,813,888, or just under 550 billion.