Month 2 day 15: なんちゃって In-N-Out burgers

Today I made:

Out-n-In California Burger, Cooking Light March 2011
served with a mix of oven fries and Arby's curly fries (these are sold in the frozen-foods section of grocery stores now)

This recipe was supposed to mimic an In-N-Out burger, but I don't know if the editors have ever eaten one. They called for avocado (left out, because none were ripe), didn't include grilled onions (but I did), and they also called for sweet (as opposed to dill) pickles and relish in the secret sauce. It did NOT taste like In-N-Out, unfortunately. G says, what's the big deal? In-N-Out isn't that good. And he doesn't like the secret sauce, which he says is just Thousand Island dressing (um, no... it's secret). To which I declare that he's the worst Californian ever.
True Californian that I am, I made my home-fries with Pappy's seasoning like a good Central Valley girl.
My typical order is an animal style burger and fries shared with someone. If I'm really in for a splurge, I'll get a chocolate-strawberry shake to share, but it's not as good now that they started posting the calorie counts on the menu. It doesn't change what I order, it just makes me feel bad about it. It occurred to me once that I don't know if I've ever eaten a normal In-N-Out burger-- I just have always ordered them animal style, and I wasn't sure what the difference was. I looked it up when I talked about In-N-Out and the secret menu in one of my classes in Japan. They were learning how to order food in their 5th grade class, and we were spending a lot of time there to prepare for this open demo lesson that other elementary teachers came and watched and analyzed. Mom convinced In-N-Out to give us a bunch of hats, which the students liked. Anyway, I told them about the secret menu, and they were amazed that such a thing exists. It's not so secret anymore; it's on their own website, although that leaves out a few key ones, like the Flying Dutchman, which I don't want, but I do want to order, just because it sounds like fun to say.