Category USA

“If you could describe this experience in one sentence, what would it be?” “I can do it in a word: Harrowing.”

Comments Off on “If you could describe this experience in one sentence, what would it be?” “I can do it in a word: Harrowing.” read Everything is Terrible, Masticating With Mellzah, Pacific, Travel, USA, Washington, West

On Friday, we went to Wing Dome (which used to be a clever play on words on Seattle’s King Dome, but now that it’s gone and so are the Sonics, it’s more like a subtle way to confuse tourists and recent transplants) to celebrate Chris’ birthday. I ate my very first chicken wing, and as with most things that come with dipping sauces, I rather enjoyed it. Chris, who decided to embark on the 7 Wing Challenge, enjoyed his somewhat less. The 7 Wing Challenge is as such: eat seven of their chicken wings smothered in seven alarm sauce in under seven minutes without using any napkins or drinking any beverage. If you win, you get the wings themselves for free, a t-shirt, and your picture on the wall of fame. If you lose, you have to pay for the wings…but not as much as you’d pay the next morning if you ate all seven. The only thing allowed on the plate at the end of seven minutes are clean bones. Our waiter helpfully added that one of the challenge-takers likened the flavor of the sauce to the devil’s dick. But Chris had just tried the five alarm sauce, and he wasn’t concerned.

He started out strong, but in the end, couldn’t make it past three wings. I don’t blame him–I tried a dot of the sauce on my pinky finger and my mouth exploded in flames while my face went numb. And not only is the sauce hot, there’s an ungodly amount of it ladled over the wings, which seems unfair. If you were to order any of their other wings, there would be only enough sauce on them to coat the surface–this was a chili bowl full of sauce dumped on top. A ten-gallon hat full of sauce.

This was an after picture. An AFTER–there’s so much sauce, you can’t even see that anything has been eaten or disturbed. Bad form, Wing Dome. Bad form.

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.

The Bigfoot Diet: Pork Chops Aplenty!

3 Comments read (f)Art, Attractions, Pacific, Travel, USA, Washington, West

Anacortes: a town with the world’s second best fish and chips, smoked salmon phone cards, and more Sasquatch paintings than you can shake a stick at. The first Sasquatch came as a surprise. “Stop the car and look at that house!” A Sasquatch bid welcome, while an attack cat warned us to keep our distance and a mermaid floated further off indifferently. We parked the car and found more on our way to a restaurant–a Sasquatch couple, the lady of the pair holding a strategically placed flower. A Sasquatch peddling juice. A Sasquatch clutching a painter’s palette. When we found ourselves in a ceramics-painting coffee shop, what else could have served as our subject?

I began thinking about the lady Sasquatch and her carefully placed flower, and inspiration struck. While my painting skills fall somewhat short of Botticelli’s, my “Birth of Sasquatch” spoon rest will bring a touch of class to my kitchen. After we were finished, we left the pieces with the shop owner to be fired and asked if we needed to leave our names in order to pick them up–he took one look at our subject matter and figured he’d be able to keep them together without any difficulty.

I can’t wait to see them after they’ve been fired. While our masterpieces are not for sale, you can see more Anacortes sasquatch art and buy your own giant sasquatch at the artist Christine Olsen’s website.