Category Masticating With Mellzah

And to drink…meatballs.

2 Comments read Attractions, Masticating With Mellzah, Midwest, Ohio, Travel, USA

It’s dinnertime. You’re in Columbus, Ohio. You may have just had a single hour of free time for the first time in a week, and you and your boyfriend decided to use it to get pleasantly hammered after his parents indicated that they might like to move in with you at some point in the future. You’re hungry. Not just regular hungry. Drunk hungry. The sort of hungry that practically compels you to make bad decisions. It’s the perfect time to order the Thurmanator from the Thurman Cafe. Food challenges always intrigue me. Maybe it has something to do with my inability to eat in front of strangers, or perhaps I just love a good trainwreck, but I adore eating competitions. I could watch the Nathan’s Famous hot dog competition once a month. Many competitive eaters are attractive people with colorful personalities, and I like that, too. When in a proper mood, I can consume frighteningly large quantities of food, but even drunk hungry, I knew I was no match for the Thurmanator challenge: consume a burger with a pound and a half of ground beef plus ham, sauteed mushrooms, grilled onions, mozzarella, cheddar, and american cheeses, bacon, lettuce, tomatoes, banana peppers, pickles, and mayo, including all the fries, in under an hour. Jason and I split it, and it was still a monster. A MONSTER.

There’s simply no way to get it all in your mouth in a bite, unless you have the capability to unhinge your jaw like a snake, which I have long-suspected some of the IFOCE eaters can do. I cannot, so I ate it piecemeal with a knife and fork which was a new and startling level of decorum for me. So how did we do? We each managed to eat our own half of the burger, plus the side, plus an appetizer of fried pickles plus a beverage apiece. Not too shabby, but still not major league eating material. Each time the car hit a bump on the way home, I was fairly certain my stomach would rupture, so if you try this, maybe skip the appetizer. Maybe.

“Well, I believe you’re required to provide a vegetarian alternative.”

7 Comments read Masticating With Mellzah

I’m pretty excited by the news that Congress has declared pizza to be a vegetable. It’s always been a struggle for me to meet my daily vegetable requirements, but not anymore! In a world where two tablespoons is equal to half a cup, I can eat veggies for lunch, dinner, and have cold leftover veggies for breakfast the next day. Can burgers being declared vegetables be far behind? How long until I’m applauded for stopping at a McDonald’s for lunch to buy a double quarter pounder with cheese, because everyone will know that I’m only in it for the three servings of vegetables included: ketchup, pickle, and minced onion? I know that late at night, especially after some drinking, there’s nothing that I crave more than four servings of vegetables in one handy place, which is why I stop at Jack in the Box and load an ultimate cheeseburger up with onion rings and jalepeno poppers. If I’m feeling extra ambitious, a side order of fries deep fried in vegetable oil will count as two more servings, for nearly an entire day’s worth of vegetables in one meal! I may even take up eating vegetables for mid-day snacks, especially if strawberry basil ice cream is declared a vegetable.

Being healthy is AWESOME. I may even become inspired to spread this healthy lifestyle around by becoming a pizza farmer. Any idea where I can get some pizza seeds?

Yo dawg, I heard you like cities so I put a city in your city

2 Comments read Attractions, California, Masticating With Mellzah, Pacific, Travel, USA, West

We took the free tram from the Sheraton Universal to Universal Studios, and were dropped off at CityWalk. Now, I’d seen the sign at the entrance of the park calling the place Universal City, but I thought they were being cutesy and calling their combination of two hotels and one theme park a city: the same way a Rite Aid, a mexican restaurant, and a Sally Beauty Supply somehow constitutes a mall. I really had no idea. Universal City itself is enormous, offering tons of dining, shopping, and entertainment options, with the Gibson Ampitheater throwing free concerts nightly. They even have an indoor skydiving facility! Had I known, we could have taken the tram the first night and skipped Hollywood Blvd…but I didn’t, so we took what limited time we had before the park opened to explore and wolf down some food. And by wolf down some food, I mean deep throat a sausage so quickly that it made Michele Bachmann look like an amateur.

I didn’t want to do much shopping, or rather, I saw a ton of things I’d want to own to wear/consume if only it wouldn’t have meant carrying it all around for the next seven hours at the park, but we decided it wouldn’t be too much effort to stuff some candy into our pockets from IT’SUGAR–especially if we found some awesome exotic candy. By exotic, I mean something we haven’t seen or tried before, instead of a giant version of something familiar (2 pound Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup, I’m looking at you!). Inside, they had a statue of Marilyn Monroe made entirely of jellybeans, and toothbrushes at 50% off:

The store was mostly full of candy you could get anywhere, but I did manage to find something I’d never seen before: Milk Chocolate Pop Rocks. Well, two things, but I’m saving the second for a nom or vom after this post. Is this really it? At twenty-nine, have I already exhausted all of my candy options?

Now that I’ve tried the pop rocks, I can safely say that I’m not a fan. In order for them to pop, you have to keep a mouthful of melted chocolate in your mouth long past the swallowing point, making them sort of awkward to eat. I don’t want to swish candy around in my mouth like wine. I’m really not even pretentious enough to do it with wine. The order of things is: put it in your mouth, enjoy, swallow. Not: put it in your mouth, wait for it, wait for it, wait for it….wait for it, enjoy, swallow. I’m a busy girl who needs instant gratification candy, lest I throw myself onto a shop floor in a delayed gratification tantrum.

After buying our candy, inhaling our sausage, and drinking an unwise amount of fluids immediately before attending an event that’s supposed to be pee-your-pants levels of scary, we found ourselves out of time and rushed off to the park entrance for the start of Halloween Horror Nights.