Welcome to the end, and the beginning, of your diet.

So last weekend was the 2010 Krispy Kreme Challenge, a race in Raleigh, NC where 6,000 racers compete to scarf more than 72,000 glazed donuts and RUN 4 MILES to raise more money for the NC Children’s Hospital.

This is now one of the most famous and hilarious eating races in the Nation:

The Krispy Kreme Challenge started in December 2004 as a dare between a few North Carolina State undergraduate students. Sophomore Ben Gaddy took home bragging rights that afternoon, running the race in 34 minutes and 27 seconds. After receiving positive coverage from campus news papers and being placed as #85 on the “102 More Things You Gotta Do Before You Graduate” by Sports Illustrated. On Campus, organizers decided to publicize the Krispy Kreme Challenge and turn it into something that would not only be an event to bring together people from all over the country, but also to benefit an important cause along the way.  It was no surprise, when organizers selected The NC Children’s Hospital as the most deserving beneficiary of this ultimate collegiate challenge.

A couple of friend’s raced and one actually placed in the top 300 competitors! I did not participate because I’ve seen a video showing what happens when you run 2 miles with 12 donuts in your belly (those of you that have done the dairy challenge may feel me) and I read this article.

If you’re racing competitively (Challenger division), here is the race:

1. Run 2 miles.
2. Eat 1 dozen donuts
3. Run 2 more miles
4. Don’t throw up
5. Do steps 1-4 in under 1 hour.

Ah…#4 and #5 – that’s the painful part. Congratulations to all those that took part! Especially those that dressed up!

Here is a video taken by some friends – notice all the folks standing around eating donuts. Delicious Krispy Kreme Donuts, made fresh right here in the Great State of North Carolina.

Could you do it?

On May 25th, 2009 I attempted to eat Bella Italia’s 30″ meat lovers pizza and failed miserably.  Looking back on the attempt,  we did fairly well, but our preparation was lacking.  We decided to give it a try the day of, and our stomachs weren’t even completely empty.  You may remember the end result looking something like this..

Well, I can’t let this embarrassment stand.  I need to go back and complete their current challenge of a 30″ pizza with a 30 minute time limit.  The beautiful part of this is I can bring two partners with me.  I would like to bring two Epic Portions readers with me to attempt this challenge. We will arrange a date and time when we can go in, and you will be a part of the glory, a post on Epic Portions, and a write-up on AnnArbor.com.  I will cover the entry fee, but it’s free if when we finish the pizza.

Comment here, e-mail me, talk to me in person, or however else you want to get ahold of me.  If I don’t know you, I need some proof that you’re a serious eater.  I can hold my own but I doubt I can finish the entire thing.  Get at me before Sunday and I will announce the team on Monday.

A few months ago my buddy Steve brought me the news that his family had purchased a sandwich shop and they would feature a sandwich challenge known as The Double Dagwood.  This sounded like a fantastic idea to me because I was fresh off my destruction of the Bomber Breakfast and I was ready to take out another local eating challenge.  February 1^st was their grand opening and I was there.  My production crew(production crew, HAHA) bailed on me so I was forced to travel all the way to Monroe to take the Double Dagwood Challenge at Doby’s Dagwoods all by my lonesome.  Could a one man force complete this task?  Was it a suicide mission?  Well, I guess you have to keep reading to find out.

Upon arrival, I was shown the frame on the wall which displayed the current record holder, a man weighing over one hundred pounds more than myself who finished the sandwich in 21 minutes and 45 seconds.  I had seen pictures of the sandwich before on Steve’s cell phone but it did the sandwich no justice.  This thing was a monster.  The Double Dagwood is basically two of their already large Dagwood Sandwiches.  It’s a double decker version with pretty much every meat in the place, a couple different kinds of cheese, lettuce, tomato, onions and their special dagwood sauce, which is a honey mustard sauce.

I took a seat and they began constructing the sandwich.  After a few minutes went by I needed to witness what I was about to eat.  Upon entering the kitchen, the familiar sandwich from the display was laid out on their prep area.  This thing was going to be rough.  I’ve eaten a lot of food before but nothing like this.  I think I’ve eaten around three pounds of food before, but it’s never been in the form of a sandwich and it was never timed.

Finally, after adding more meat then they had thought was necessary, the sandwich went onto the scale.  I had expected a four pound sandwich but apparently the sandwich only weighs in at three, which chips and a pickle on the side.  Regardless of the one pound weight difference, this was still going to be tough.  They put the sandwich in front of me on the table and the thing was really starting to scare me.  I had acted pretty confident up until this point but I was really beginning to have doubts.  Could I actually do this?  Could my stomach hold this entire thing in?  I was about to find out.

Unfortunately my production crew(production crew, HAHA) was absent during the challenge, so you’re going to have to take my word on my technique.

I took the sandwich apart and spit it in halves.  The bottom half contained most of the meat so I decided it would be smart to begin with that.  Upon my first bite, it really hit me how much meat was on this thing.  Even after squeezing it down as much as possible, there was still four or five inches of meat to bite through.  My technique was simply to take as big of bites as possible and chew frantically.  I definitely tested the size of my esophagus and swallowed some chunks of meat that weren’t even partially chewed yet.  I ate the middle piece of bread in between bites and the first half the sandwich went down in only about six minutes.  This was going well so far.

Upon my first bite of the top half of the sandwich, I realized that the onions on this sandwich were among the most potent onions I have ever had.  One hit the back of my throat and my gag reflex was immediately triggered.  I went through and pulled off as many onions as I could.  This is where things started going bad.  I kept eating and shoving the chips into my mouth but my jaw was growing very tired.  Bites were taking twice as long to chew and time was going by fast.  At the 21 minute and 45 second mark, I had only about a bite or two left or bread and the scraps that were on my plate.

I took a small break and finished the sandwich in about 24 minutes.  I was full, don’t get me wrong, but it wasn’t the fullness that prevented me from setting a new record.  My jaw was overworked and those onions punches me in the back of the throat.

I will return shortly to complete this record after doing some jaw gymnastics or something.  This shouldn’t be too tough next time.  Thanks to Steve and Doby’s Dagwoods for making me this gigantic sandwich on their opening day.

Update: I was informed by Steve that the previous record holder actually completed the challenge with a pound less meat than I did so apparently the word is that I am the new record holder.  Excellence is my middle name.

If you want to try the Double Dagwood for yourself, the address is..

Doby’s Dagwoods
111 South Monroe Street
Monroe, MI 48161
http://www.dobysdagwood.com/

On February 21st, 2009 I attempted the Bomber Breakfast for the first time and failed miserably.  It was an embarrassing moment for me.  The waitresses laughed at me, and the bus boy made me bus my own table.  As I was pulling out of the parking lot, customers began throwing eggs at my car.  I required many hours of intense therapy to get over the pain, and three car washes to clean the eggs off.

After my rehabilitation period, I began training for the moment when I was ready to go back and prove to these people that I am not the “skinny little bitch” that they claimed I was.  That breakfast could fit in my stomach, I just went about it wrong!  I should have eaten the hash browns first!  With this in mind, I decided to go full Rocky 4 style and travel to Russia for some old school training.  This included jumping rope, running through the snow, doing sit-ups in a barn, and other activities that don’t involve performance enhancing drugs or running on a treadmill on a ridiculous incline.

With my mind, body and spirit in the right place I returned to the Bomber to reclaim my self respect.  I ordered my breakfast and the waitress brought it to me with a giant smirk on her face.  Little did she know, I was about to blow her mind.

If you’re not familiar with the bomber breakfast, it is one pound of hash browns, ten strips of bacon, four eggs, and two slices of toast.  Observe:

My plan going in was to smother the hash browns with ketchup and Red Hot so they would go down easier.  The first time I attempted this I ate the bacon first then moved onto the hash browns.  This ended up being a terrible idea.  The real challenge of getting through this breakfast is the hash browns.  The taste gets old real fast and your stomach becomes full if you don’t get them down fast enough.  My plan worked beautifully, and the potatoes were gone from the plate within five minutes.  It was a moral victory me just to get those things down.

After getting through the hash browns, it was all down hill from there.  Bacon and over easy eggs are two of my favorite things in the entire world, so this wasn’t even much of a challenge anymore.  The bacon was a little crispy, but it went down fast.  No problems here.  I did see the waitress walk by a few times with a worried look on here face.  Boom.

With the bacon and hash browns gone, victory was in sight.  All I had to do was smash through four eggs and a couple pieces of toast.  I considered this more of a victory lap than a final stretch.  I broke the yolks with my first two pieces of toast and used the dip method, ate the whites with my fork, then cleaned the plate with my final two pieces of toast.  Victory was mine.

If you will notice, I decided to devour that stupid orange garnish just to prove a point.  After finishing, I threw my plate across the restaurant and walked out without paying my bill.  Who’s laughing now?

I would like to point out that everything written above is false.  No one made any ill comments towards me, threw eggs at my car, or made any faces at me.  I also did not travel to Russia.  I did, however, destroy the Bomber Breakfast and the orange that came with it.  Boo yah, bitches.

Kobayashi gave a giant middle finger to Joey Chestnut, in the form of slider consumption.  In eight minutes Takeru was able to take down 93 sliders in the Krystal Square-Off this weekend.   Chestnut only finished with 81.  Holy shit.

“We knew today’s Krystal Square Off championship was going to be a battle for the ages with Kobayashi hoping to reclaim his glory and Chestnut defending his two-year reign as champ, and both eaters did not disappoint,” said Brad Wahl, vice president of marketing, The Krystal Company. “Kobayashi’s commanding win over Chestnut proved once again why he is the sport’s biggest star.”

It’s not like this was a race to the finish.  Kobayashi just bitch slapped Chestnut.  It’s like he insulted his entire family.  This will make my father happy, who swears Chestnut has been cheating somehow.

Within a short(HA!) driving distance of me, the Guiness record for largest burger was set at Mallie’s Sports Grill & Bar in Southgate, MI.  The burger weighs 185 lb and requires a baking time of 15 hours before eating.  The bun also takes 8 hours to bake.  Interested in trying it out?  Better bring $499 with you.  That’s a rather expensive burger.  Thanks to Mallie’s website for the pictures.  Check this thing out.  I could eat it if I wasn’t on a diet.  For sure.

Mallie’s Sports Grill & Bar
19400 NORTHLINE RD
SOUTHGATE MICHIGAN 48195

2nd Place, 2006 Central Illinois International Chili Championship! Matt (in Red) and Todd (in Tigers hat) along with Chili judges and first place winner (on far left). It was rigged!

It’s about time I fessed up.  Back in 2006, my friend Matt and I entered the Urbana Beer and Chili Festival (Urbana, IL – my old stompin’ grounds) in an attempt to unseat the hitherto unbeaten Champaign County Democrats.  Otherwise known as the Central Illinois International Chili Championship, this competition invites amateur and restaurant competitors to duke it out in the greatest of drinking and chili eating venues – the downtown Urbana, IL parking garage.  Set on a windy, mid-fall Saturday, this environment adds the perfect garnishes to the classic, fall football weekend: Chili and lot and lots of beer.

College students handing out beer samples to their friends and taking purchased tickets. If that isn't a conflict of interest, then I don't know what is

For those of you poor souls who haven’t attended a Chili cookoff, they typically begin with competitors checking in, setting up their booths, passing health inspection, and finally – making their chili in a set period of time.  We had 4 hours to prep and cook, in which we were to make 4 gallons of chili for attendees to sample along with several hundred types of beer bought with donations from local business.  A portion of the gate went to charity (it’s good to give back! – name that movie quote).

Although I’m not bitter…*whatsoever*, the competition functions in the following manner, year after year after year: 1) Competitors make their chili.  2) Around 1000 people sample the chili.  The chilis that run out quickly are clearly the crowd favorites, since everyone makes roughly the same amount.  3) The judges then go and pick the best chilis.  4) At this point, the judges write the names of the best chilis on a piece of paper.  5) That piece of paper is then set on fire, after which the judges piss on the will of the people, and again give the victory to the Champaign County Democrats (the two party system?  ”The after party is the one you really want to attend”).   Year after year, people!  For Godsake, their chili tastes like its been blended!  BLENDED!!  Who does that?!  We ran out of our chili in like 2 hours, and they were still trying to unload their mush practically until dawn!  Anyway, we came in Second.  Booo!  Now that I got that out of my system…

Making good chili, especially 4 gallons of chili, is a long process.  First, you’ve got to practice – you must refine your recipe.  In the case of chili, this can be expensive, depending on the type of meat you want to use.  We got ours from the University of Illinois meat lab.  That’s right – for those of you who live in the U.S. near land grant schools (state colleges that have agriculture programs), many animal science programs have meat labs where they train students to butcher.  This is an awesome place to get a rediculous amount of meat for cheap.

Sometimes, the word “ridiculous” can be relative.  For the competition, we got around 16 pounds of bottom round steak.  16 pounds – that’s 256 oz of delicious steak.  Even Joey Chestnut couldn’t put that down.  Only problem – it came somewhat frozen.

• Todd’s Chili Lesson #1: DO NOT try to cut 16 pounds of slightly frozen steak into 1 inch cubes with a dull knife.  Or any kind of knife.  Just throw your hand in front of a Chuck Norris roundhouse kick – it will happen faster and feel the same.

My recipe [which I will reveal for the first time to the world in a future post - so stay tuned!], also calls for a lot of diced vegetables.  During a Chili competition, when many groups quadruple (or more) their normal recipe sizes, this means a LOT of diced vegetables.  When you’re in an outdoor booth with crapola, dull Ikea knives…surrounded by shit talking competitors…with a huge cooler of beer waiting for you after prep – dicing is no longer fun.  At all.

• Todd’s Chili Lesson #2: Find a restaurant supply store and purchase bagged, pre-diced vegetables.  This is usually still legit to use in the competition – you can’t pre-cut any veggies on your own and bring them in your own bag, but you can bring pre-cut veggies in a package from a store…damn health inspectors.  Hatred is crying into the blisters you got from dicing veggies, while watching (out of your one, remaining good eye) the guy next door slowly pour a giant sack of perfectly diced onion into his Chili, as he enjoys a tall, cool Budweiser.

Now that we’ve prepped the Chili – it’s time to get cookin’.  At our competition, we had to bring our own cooking devices.  As we were both poor college students at the time, we bought 3 portable electric burners off of Amazon.com (3 massive pots=about 4 gallons).  Many of the characters we were competing against simply brought turkey fryers and a few propane tanks.  We later realized that those people were very, very, very smart.  That’s right: Competitors = Smart.  Todd = Dumb.

• Todd’s Chili Lesson #3: Test your cooking devices.  Having an electric burner is actually a fairly smart idea.  You can leave it on for several hours without having propane problems.  It’s also a really really cheap alternative.  HOWEVER – be sure to understand the electrical network on which your burners will rely.  We found out about 15 minutes into cooking that two of our burners were not heating up enough.  We were basically maxing out the system.  That’s right – the Chili competition was reliant on TWO circuits for our entire section.  Whoops!  Got it figured out, but it killed our momentum, our confidence, and our buzz.  Would have helped to know more ahead of time.

In the end, the competition went incredibly well.  After our few preparation hiccups, we got things cooking and our well devised recipe and practice preparations served us well.  Have confidence in your burners.  Chili has to be a certain temperature to be served to the public.  We spent the first hour worrying if we could even get it hot enough to serve – the electrical problem didn’t help!  After things heated up, we were almost worried that our chili would get TOO hot.  Things might have been worse if we hadn’t been cooling off with a steady stream of liquid anxiety treatments…

• Todd’s Chili Lesson #4: Bring ample libations.  You’re cooking chili, not curing polio.  If you don’t have enough confidence in your chili that you can’t cook it slightly fuzzy faced, then you just haven’t done your homework.  You let down yourself, your competitors, and most of all…your Chili.

The final lesson in all of this – it’s all in the marketing.  Give your chili a personality.  Give it a brand!  Make it unique and people will want to come to your booth to try it.  If they like it, they will make their friends come and try it too.  And, as we all know – after everyone has 2 or 3 or 8 beers in them, they will certainly want to try a lot more.   This gives us our final lesson:

• Todd’s Chili Lesson #5: Decorate!  Decorate your booth, decorate yourself.  We did not do this.  After quickly following lesson #4, we might have THOUGHT we decorated (liquid confidence).  In reality, however, we certainly did not.

Second place team. Other than our award winning personalities, we brought no decorations. You must give your Chili a persona!

This sore sight contrasts heavily with the third place team (also people’s choice winners) who really justified their decorations by making one of the spiciest chilis that I’ve ever tasted.  They were also right next to us, which is why there is all that caution tape in the background of our photo.  Brilliant!

Third place team. Personality, decorations (even brought chili plants!), and one hell of a spicy chili! Unfortunately, this team also actually blended their chili - something that was strangely uncomfortable to watch. Maybe that's why their booth was wrapped in caution tape...