I made Nicholas Sparks’ Splenda-packed chicken salad.
Today, The New York Times’ real estate section published a story about Nicholas Sparks’ house, which looks very big, features lots of local art, and also boasts “the opening paragraph of The Notebook … inscribed on a wall behind a bar in a hallway next to the foyer.”
But the most eye-popping detail was in a thorough description of Sparks preparing lunch:
Mr. Sparks spent the morning at his kitchen’s granite countertop chopping two skinless, boneless rotisserie chickens, a few stalks of celery and a Vidalia onion. He then whipped together a dressing consisting of mayonnaise, dill pickle relish, jalapeño relish, apple cider vinegar, salt, pepper, cayenne pepper and 16 packets of Splenda. “You can use real sugar, but why throw sugar in if you can use Splenda?” Mr. Sparks asked, adding that he tries to avoid carbs “most of the time.”
I know people like sweet chicken salad with apples, grapes, or dried fruit, but if social media is any indication, we all had the same reaction: damn that’s a lot of Splenda, man.
Sparks’ answer of “why throw sugar in if you can use Splenda” seems to assume that choosing Splenda over sugar is the surprising thing, but the real jump scare is adding that much sugar at all. And the fact that he’s specifying 16 packets means he’s dialed this in. We’re not talking a Robert-Pattinson-improvising-pasta-recipes situation here.
My cooking brain recoiled, but thankfully my blogging brain took over and I ran to the bodega to get a few things to make this Sweet Sparks Salad.
The consensus seems to be that two rotisserie chickens yield about 6 cups of meat, at least according to Betty Crocker and others, so I decided to halve the recipe, and chopped up 3 cups of leftover chicken breast along with 2 celery stalks and one half of a small Vidalia—I would use more onion for crunch and sharpness, but I’m already worried about how sweet this is going to get.
For the dressing, I needed to eyeball things a bit more. To about a cup and a half of mayo I added a few tablespoons of relish and chopped pickled jalapeño.
Then a few more tablespoons of apple cider vinegar—again, I used a light hand here, because the sweetness is already starting to pile up. Then, cayenne, pepper, and salt.
And finally, the reason we’re all here, 8 packets of Splenda, courtesy of my local cafe. Shout out to the barista for being cool with me ordering a double espresso and then pocketing ten packets—thank you for making blogging possible.
I mixed it all together—it looked a little dry, so I added a bit more mayo.
At this point my wife, who was getting ready for her job as a social worker for children, asked me what I, her husband who was mixing Splenda into mayo, was doing. She listened patiently to my explanation, even when it began with the red flag “so on Twitter.” She didn’t want a taste.
The final verdict? It’s sweet! What did we expect, folks? The Splenda, relish, and apple cider vinegar are all making this cloying sweet, hitting the tongue from a lot of sugary angles. I guess this might work if you have a major sweet tooth, or you’re looking for some kind of dessert chicken salad, or are making a sandwich and need to balance out some salty bread. But this isn’t for me, or to put it more Notebook-y: I won’t be smooching this recipe in the rain.
Now, I eyeballed a lot here so I could be mangling the recipe—Mr. Sparks, reach out if I messed up—but I don’t see a way to overcome so much sucralose. I tried mixing in more mayo, spices, and jalapeño, but it’s hard to overwhelm that factory sweetness of Splenda—it’s slicing right through everything.
I’m going to try to muscle through this on a sandwich for lunch and see if that helps things at all, but if you’re in South Brooklyn and want some chicken salad, I’m looking to share.
