Earlier this week, the New York Times’ real estate section published a feature on Nicholas Sparks, the author of hit novels The Notebook, A Walk to Remember, and Dear John, among others. The photo-filled article centers mostly around the author’s North Carolina home. Mentioned as an aside, however, is a fascinating, if horrifying, snippet about Sparks’s eating habits.
It reads: “Earlier in the day, before a photographer and reporter arrived at his home, 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.” Sixteen(!) packets of Splenda! If only the photographer had been there to shoot it!
Sparks, who apparently avoids carbs, explained: “You can use real sugar, but why throw sugar in if you can use Splenda?” Splenda is about twice as sweet as sugar, so according to the conversion chart on the box, 16 packets is the equivalent of 32 teaspoons of sugar. That’s sweeter than a can of Coke; that is an absolutely diabolical amount of sweetness.
I was morbidly curious, driven by the same impulse that I imagine compels Queer Eye’s Antoni Porowski to smell things that he knows will smell bad and to then go back for another hit. I had to try the Splenda chicken salad. Was there any way it could turn out good? Some sweetness in chicken salad is essential for balance, isn’t it?
I got two rotisserie chickens and assembled the salad per the Times’ description, skipping the raw onion, which I don’t like in chicken salad, and saving the Splenda step for last. You’d be so good just like this, I thought to my chicken salad, before tearing open the Splenda packets. Then, the point of no return: I let the Splenda fall.
I have eaten some less-than-delicious things for the sake of a taste test, but even figgy pudding-flavored Spam wasn’t really that bad. Still, most mass-produced food banks on some level of commercial appeal. The same does not apply, I realize now, to the tastes of famous authors left to their own devices in their “palatial riverfront” homes.
I took a bite of the Splenda chicken salad and felt the visceral need to grimace. It tasted like an accident, like an open container of powdered sugar had fallen from the shelf above me and into my chicken bowl. “We’d probably like it if we drank Diet Coke,” my husband, ever-optimistic, mused, pointing to the chicken salad’s uncanny artificial-sweetener aftertaste. Like an unsuccessful test of Willy Wonka’s three-course dinner gum, it felt like chewing chicken salad and taking a swig of diet soda at the same time; I’d rather keep the two separate.
Maybe the problem was that I’d done the ratios wrong, I rationalized. The Times hadn’t run a recipe after all. I decided to add more mayo, salt, vinegar, and cayenne, hoping they’d even out the sweetness. But the thing about Splenda is that it’s cloyingly persistent. I added another round of everything. Even after throwing in a frankly concerning amount of salt, the salad was distinctly sweet. “Every flavor is good, except for the sweetness,” my husband said, reluctantly accepting a plate of it for dinner. Adding the juice of a lemon helped, as did putting the salad on toast, and I imagine capers or cornichons would improve the situation too, but Sparks made no mention of these things. Alas, maybe the onions were the key after all, or maybe I’d feel the same way, but with onion breath.
I have absolutely no idea how someone could choose to put this much Splenda in a chicken salad in the first place, or decide that the final result tastes good. But clearly Nicholas Sparks and I are just built different, and maybe what you need to succeed in writing romances so memorable that they shape teenage girls’ lives is a preternatural capacity for understanding sweetness in all its forms. Or maybe the Times just goofed and it’s supposed to say “1 packet of Splenda,” in which case, joke’s on me.
Sparks knows what he’s good at, but I’m not sure a cookbook is in the cards.
