David and the Goliath burger…and the Challenges ahead.

More food?

A little over a year ago, I was at an establishment known in the western suburbs as the “Cadillac Ranch.” It’s a 4 o’clock bar with the reputation of a bordello…bad people, bar fights, and easy girls. I wasn’t in the “Ranch” per se, but was in the attached steak house, “Sam Houston’s.” After looking at the main courses, I found one I had to get. I can’t remember the name of the burger, but I do remember the whole meal weighed in at a meaty 4 pounds. 2 pounds of meat was trapped between the “fixin’s” and a bun that weighed a pound on it’s own, and accompanying this dominant dish was 1 pound of crinkle-cut french fries. I guess if you ate the whole thing in under a half hour they gave it to you for free. In retrospect, that wasn’t really a great deal, considering the whole meal cost $15. I found out that the restaurant had not had to pay for anyone’s colossal burger…yet.

My friends told me to back off. One of my much larger pals had attempted the conquest no more than a week ago and succumbed – after only eating the bun. Even the waitress told me I couldn’t handle it. She scanned my 165 lb frame and said, “Son, if you’re serious, and you look like you are, I’ll get the manager out here when you finish that thing, and I’ll pay for it myself, regardless of how long it takes you.”

“Deal, bitch,” echoed in my brain.

15 minutes later, I found myself face to face with the biggest burger I had ever seen. I began to do work. I started first by scraping off the lettuce and tomatoes and onions. I wasn’t going to let some stupid vegetables stand in my way of becoming an American Hero (vegetarians read: I was saving the best for last!) (carnivorous folk read: Fuck vegetables. There was easily a head of lettuce, 2 tomatoes and an onion on that fucking thing.). I set to work carving the meat into fork-sized bites. About halfway through the meat I felt something turn over in my stomach. “Put it out of your head,” I told myself, “This is the race. Don’t slow down.” More and more ground beef found it’s way to my stomach, until at last, 2 pounds of it was packed in there. At this point I started to feel like hell.

How do you eat 1 lb of bread and 1 lb of potatoes after you’ve gorged on 2 lbs of meat? There is but one answer to that question: Courage. In the face of a challenge you cannot let yourself be daunted: I continued eating. I started with the top half of the bun. Eating bread makes you thirsty, and the last thing I wanted was to fill up on water, so I dunked every third or fourth piece in the glass of water, instead of guzzling it. After successfully finishing the top half of the bun, I went to work on the fries. I could feel myself becoming more and more tired as I forged on (this is actually medically true, as blood leaves your blood stream and goes to your stomach to help it digest food – thus leaving your brain with less blood to oxygenate it). My friends mocked me, “You can’t have desert until you eat all your vegetables.” Their comments fueled my anger, my determination, my want, but alas, they did not fuel my appetite. I went down in the 10th, knocked out by only a handful of fries and the bottom half of a huge bun. I was out. The lights blurred, my friends tried to shake me, but I was gone. Done-zo.

I cannot let myself be outdone by something that was killed with the sole purpose of me eating it. Thus, I have decided to make a comeback. “Sam Houston’s” is gone, probably a “Moretti’s” or something now, but the contenders are still out there. Now weighing a meaty 170 lbs, I’ve decided to train and get back in the ring. I’ve renamed myself “The Steel Stomach,” and have decided to take on all the famous food challenges you only hear about when someone dies:

The Cinnamon Dragon (youtube that shit). It looks painful.
1 gallon of milk in 1 hour. I’m going with Skim.
8 saltines in 2 minutes. They’re crackers.
And, made famous by Paul Newman in “Cool Hand Luke,” 50 hard-boiled eggs in one hour.

If you can think of others, throw them my way. I need to prove to people that the tasks above can be done. This is my chance.

I’m asking you, Kevin and Brian, to help me facilitate the events. I want this.

No.

I need this. I shall ne’er suffer defeat at the hands of food (while there is food in my hands) again.

Categorised in: Random Posts

This post was written by Matt