Why Do I Do This to Myself?

I bought a book the other day while perusing at Vertigo Books (here's their blog!) in College Park. I highly recommend the shop if you are in the area. There is certainly something to be said for the small, independent bookstores. The book was 5 People Who Died During Sex (and 100 other Terribly Tasteless Lists. As an archivist, I crave information and love the list. Plus having worked at the Rockefeller Archive Center in New York, I knew a bit about Nelson Rockefeller's departure from this world.

But anyway the first "chapter" of the book is titled "Choice Cuts" and deals with culinary facts, including among others:

• 10 National Delicacies (those Indonesians love their monkey toes)
• 10 Food-related Deaths (In 1818, Abraham Lincoln's mother, Nancy, is reported to have died after consuming milk from the family cow, which had recently been grazing on some poisonous mushrooms)
• 10 Historic Drunks (who knew that Noah, according to the Old Testament, was the first person to get drunk).

My wife would like to see some footnotes and/or sources for these lists, but that's a blog entry for another day. I write today to say this was not the book to pick up and read this first chapter after last night's culinary adventure.

As some of you may recall, yesterday was our good friend's 40th birthday and they planned "The Night of 1000 Clams." It's possible I ate that many. In addition to the clams, the "fish camp" served up a variety of fish-related dips and spreads (crab dip, herring in sour cream) and then the main course featured lobster tails, clams, and shrimp. There was also rice and mac and cheese (God, why?!)

Of course cold beer goes well with seafood, so I had a few of those, but wisely stopped in time to avoid that sickness. If I was going to get sick, I wanted to make sure it was the food and not the booze. Another friend and blog reader would be happy to report he had four bottle caps in his shirt pocket and the fourth beer went unfinished.

So as we finished dinner, I immediately saw the need to lie down. Thank God there was presents before dessert, allowing for a little digestive time before bringing on the cake and other sweet treats (snow day cookies - raspberry linzer and oatmeal) as well as a chocolate trifle with Kahlua and Heath bar in it. It's possible they may have been trying to kill me.

Needless to say, the best wife ever drove home, but I made sure to declare that it was not because I was alcoholically impaired, but gastronomically distressed. So what did I do today? Popcorn for lunch at the movies, followed by an outstanding lamb dinner and ice cream sundaes for lunch. I feel as if I might have to bounce into bed tonight.

And so I leave you with the final list from that first chapter, "Choice Cuts" - "Gluttons for Punishment: Twenty World Eating Records:

1. 50 hot dogs in 12 minutes
2. 57 cow brains in 10 minutes (does that make you smarter?)
3. 3.5 pounds of cooked dog in 18 minutes, 10 seconds
4. 100 yards of spaghetti in 28 seconds (that's a hell of a slurp)
5. 12 slugs in 2 minutes
6. 28 cockroaches in 4 minutes
7. 60 earthworms in 3 minutes, 6 seconds
8. 100 live maggots in 5 minutes, 29 seconds (urp!)
9. 2 pounds of eels in 32 seconds
10. 144 snails (that's a gross to you and me) in 11 minutes, 30 seconds
11. 12 bananas (with peel) in 4 minutes, 14 seconds
12. 13 raw eggs in 1.4 seconds
13. 65 hard-boiled eggs in 6 minutes, 40 seconds
14. 7 quarter-pound sticks of salted butter in 5 minutes (I might have had that much in the melted variety last night)
15. 5.75 pounds of asparagus spears in 10 minutes (Man, how long do you think their pee smelled?)
16. 6 pounds, 9 ounces of cabbage in 9 minutes
17. 1 gallon, 9 ounces vanilla ice cream in 12 minutes
18. 6 pounds of tinned Spam in 12 minutes
19. 3 onions in 1 minute
20. 4 32-ounce bowls of mayonnaise in 8 minutes (how many fistfuls is that?)