Friday Food Follies V
Table of contents for Friday Food Follies
With Thanksgiving safely behind us, it’s time to return to the greatest continuing series concerning the comedy that is comestibles: Friday Food Follies! We present for your delight and confusion: A donut-dunking turkey; an unconventional use for vodka; and an important food sporting event…
Dateline Wednesday, Hagerstown, MD: Turkey is Man’s Best Friend
Customers of Dunkin’ Donuts were surprised to see a grown gobbler waiting in line at the drive-through a their favorite fat-pill shop. One customer, Pete Lehmann by name, gave this account:
“There was a customer in front of me and he was a turkey, and he didn’t seem to have a real sense of urgency to move out of the way where you’d expect him to in light of what tomorrow is.”
Ray Patel, the manager, observed:
“It actually came up to the drive-thru and was trying to stick its head in there basically and blocked all the cars in the drive-thru coming through…”
Observers stated the turkey was tame and well-behaved (for a bird nervous about his imminent fate, at least). Nobody could say how the turkey came to be there, although the situation resolved itself fairly quickly. After getting a good sample of donut holes, the turkey was boosted by an anonymous fellow who simply drove up, grabbed the feathered feaster and tossed him onto the seat of his car. The guy then drove away without a word. The turkey didn’t have much to say either, according to several eyewitnesses.
Personally, I doubt this fowl is doomed. He’s in training, I bet. Some guy who doesn’t want to get out of bed every morning to get his doughy delights is training his best bird to fetch. I mean, what are the odds that any stray dog would be handed a sample of donut holes just for wandering by the drive-through? But that turkey, he was practically treated like family. Now all the guy has to do is train the turkey not to eat the treats, and run like hell…
Brisbane, Australia: Socialized Medicine to the Rescue!
If you are concerned about your health and you want to do the tourist thing anyway, be sure to take in Australia. There is now incontrovertible evidence that Brisbane is the place to be, should you fall unconscious from ingesting a large quantity of ethylene glycol. An insensate Italian tourist was transported to Brisbane’s Mackay Base Hospital, where he was immediately fitted with a drip of pharma-grade alcohol, the prescribed treatment. However, due to the constraints of socialized medicine, the Italian soon exhausted all the hospital’s supply of medicinal hootch.
They say desperation is often the mother of innovation. Dr. Fraser, the attending physician, chose to attempt a novel (and probably satisfying) solution to the life-threatening insult: A nasal tube into the stomach, through which he administered vodka.
The hapless vacationer was treated with booze for three days. As Dr. Fraser describes,
“…. while the treatment was unconventional, it was very successful, with the patient having now made a full recovery.
“The patient was drip-fed about three standard drinks an hour for three days in the intensive care unit,” he said.
This Italian must be one boozin’ doozie! I don’t know of even one other person who can imbibe three drinks of 80-proof vodka, straight, every hour for more than three hours or so without passing out from alcohol poisoning. That excludes the fraternity guy I had as a college roommate for one semester, of course. And I bet the medical markup on that Dutch courage was substantial, making it comparable to the drinks I’m served at the bar down the street. I hope he got a quantity discount!
The patient has been discharged and is now looking for chapter of Alcoholics Anonymous near his home. He has a prescription for that, too…
Thanksgiving Day, Des Moines, IA: Amateurs Need Not Apply
I know you had the whole clan over for your annual Food Consumption Contest. However, even if your brother-in-law Jedadiah did consume four pounds of turkey, a dozen slabs of ham, fourteen helpings of various side dishes, and a whole pumpkin pie, he’s still an amateur. All the Real Eaters were in Iowa for a season-appropriate contest: The Turkey Bowl, organized by the International Federation of Competitive Eating.
Although public opinion is strongly polarized on the issue of gorging on various edibles in search of fame, fortune and glory, there were clearly competitors at the Turkey Bowl who felt they should be seen as positive role models.
The group’s chairman, George Shea, said competitive eaters are athletes who train for their sport, working to improve jaw strength and increasing their stomach capacity.
“Most of us are pretty thin and in pretty good shape. To say we’re bad examples is misleading,” the 5-foot-10, 165-pound Janus said. A 30-year-old stock trader from New York City, he competes in about 30 contests a year and holds records in several categories, including tamales (71 in 12 minutes) and cannoli (28 in 6 minutes).
Dr. Lee Kaplan, director of the Massachusetts General Hospital Weight Center in Boston, said concerns over the link between the contests and obesity aren’t well founded. “I think these competitions are somewhat caricatures of eating behavior … and don’t have much relevance to the obesity problem,” he said.
Brian Wansink, a food science and psychology professor at Cornell University, compared competitive eaters to other extreme athletes. “It’s the same sort of person who, let’s say, would train really hard and compete really hard in a marathon,” said Wansink, author of “Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think.”
Now doesn’t that make you feel better about brother Jed’s accomplishment yesterday? And if you missed the landmark showing of the Turkey Bowl on Spike TV yesterday evening because you were indolently watching the mass media’s insipid broadcasts of mundane events like parades and national football, you can catch the reruns over the next few days.
Enjoy the (Half-Baked) Heat!
One Response to “Friday Food Follies V”
November 29th, 2007 at 10:26 am
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