This sandwich took six months and $1500 to make

It sounds legitimately crazy: A $1,500 sandwich. But before you ask, “HOW? WHY? ARE THERE GOLD FLAKES ON IT?” I’m going to remind you that this pricey sandwich took six months to make and confuse you all over again.

But Andy George, this epic lunch’s creator, isn’t crazy. He’s simply a man with a mission: to make basically all the things by hand, from scratch. According to The Atlantic, his YouTube channel features him making every day things that we take for granted, such as a suit or a hammer. One of those things is the aforementioned sandwich.

The sandwich Andy George made sounds simple: chicken breast with cheese and the standard lettuce/ pickle/ tomato combo. However, it’s a lot more complicated than that. For one, George had to grow his own vegetables, including the cucumbers he would later turn into pickles by SORCERY! (Or by the standard process, which includes slicing the cucumbers, stirring them with onions and pickling salt, brining and canning them.)

He also had to harvest wheat by hand for the bread, milk a cow for milk to make (remember, by hand) cheese and butter, grow the other vegetables on the sandwich, and — here’s where things get dark — commit murder. As in, slaughter a chicken, and all the sad activities that come with it. Poor chicken.

He also had to get actual ocean water for the salt and cook it down, causing the somewhat hilarious but unsurprising interaction with airport security agents who likely thought the salt was some sort of illicit substance.

All in all, the task took six months, and cost George roughly $1,500.

So, how was it?

In George’s words, “Not bad. That’s about it.” The video then shows him absorb the reality of all that time and money for a sandwich that’s simply not bad. Additionally, a follow-up video shows that some taste-testers might disagree with that assessment; it may have in fact been, well, quite bad.

Hopefully, however, Andy George doesn’t feel too discouraged: if nothing else, his experience and the resulting video (which does feature some chicken-murder, so be advised) is a testament to how much we take for granted — both in terms of the labor and time it takes to hand-make something that seems so simple, and in terms of what it takes to get a really great sandwich.