When Andy George uploaded a video on YouTube in 2015, entitled “How to Make a $1500 Sandwich in Only Six Months,” everyone thought it was a joke. What they didn’t know was that George really had taken on the task of creating every aspect of a sandwich completely from scratch as part of a new web series he was creating. He started by growing a garden of his own vegetables and even took a flight to the West Coast to make salt when he found it was impossible to do in his home state of Minnesota without accessible mines. George had to build his own press in order to extract oil from the sunflowers he had grown. He even went so far as to harvest his own wheat, milk a cow to make cheese, and slaughter a chicken.
If that wasn’t enough, he also collected honey—bees and all—and made his own butter from scratch. In total, it took George six months to have everything ready, and it cost him $1,500. Once his task was complete, he invited his friends over for a taste-test. The verdict was that his homegrown vegetables tasted better than the ones bought at the store, but that the sandwich made with store-bought ingredients was better overall. George’s response to the sandwich he spent six months making? “It’s not bad.”