Adventures in Gluttony, Part 1

I ate a little too much on Father's Day, starting with this:

Poached eggs = boiled awesomeness.

To be honest, I eat a little too much every day, but I had a rather large breakfast at Toast, an airy breakfast place in Huntington, and then I treated myself to a small Crumbs cupcake (the kids indulged in frozen hot chocolates at the Dunkin Donuts next door), and as we walked around the downtown streets, I had that "I can't believe I ate that whole thing" feeling.

As the contents of my breakfast began to clog my pyloric valve, I thought about those times when I truly, madly, deeply ate too much.


NOT TO BE CONFUSED WITH MY EVERYDAY RUN-OF-THE-MILL OVEREATING
I'm certain that I'm not alone in maintaining a difficult relationship with cereal. The source of my problem is my inability to create a perfect cereal-to-milk ratio. I always overmilk the bowl, and that starts the eat-the-cereal-add-more-cereal-to-the-bowl-of-milk-the-eat-the-cereal cycle that's part of a balanced death.

Just about any cereal will create this situation, but I'm especially prone to overdoses of Honeycomb, Chocolate Cheerios, and Cinnamon Toast Crunch, a cereal whose addictive powers really ought to require that it be regulated as a controlled substance. Add cinnamon sugar to milk, and you have crack.

So anyway, let's discuss those embarrassing tales from The Gross Gourmand.

EPISODE 1: TWO NEW YORK FOOD INSTITUTIONS AND A CITY STROLL DO NOT MIX
The first story occurred at one of my Manhattan-based jobs, which, incidentally, was at a company that just recently closed for good.

It was a Friday during the summer, and employees enjoyed half-day Fridays every other week. This was on Friday that my half of the office had to put in a full day, but we usually took long lunches anyway. One of the salesmen, Mike, and I chose to dine at Jackson Hole, one of the better NYC hamburger joints. On a whim, we decided to avoid the usual spot on Third and 35th, which was close to our 35th-between-Fifth-and-Madison work location, and chugged up to the East 64th Street venue.

I can and probably will do a post on my hamburger exploits in the future, but let's just say that Mike and I were very stuffed and satisfied. After this, we decided against taking a return subway trip, and chose to walk off the calories.

It would be a long walk.

Starting at the green arrow in the upper right and wandering cross- and downtown toward the grey dot at the end of the orange line, that would be a nearly two-mile journey. (That "1" in the circle represents the one-mile mark.)

A two-mile walk after lunch sounds like a great idea, and it was, except we made a near-fatal detour.

IT WAS SERENDIPITY THAT WE BOTH SUFFERED MILD HEART ATTACKS
We decided to stop by Serendipity 3, a Big Apple landmark known for long wait times, lots of tourists, and the beginning of the decline of John Cusack's film career. Its signature offering is the frozen hot chocolate, which makes the Dunkin Donuts impostor that my kids slurped today the equivalent of just about any other non-doughnut item you can get at Dunkin Donuts, from too-chewy bagels to inedible muffins.

The drink, as you can see from this photo I stole off one of the Internets, arrives as a table centerpiece, stabbed with enough straws to be shared by a large party.

Death by chocolate? More like murder by chocolate, amirite?

Mike and I ordered one each. To go. To drink while we walked the 25-plus blocks back to work. In mid-80s heat.

Everything seemed to be going as well as it could, though we were both perspiring in our corporate-casual attire, until we crossed over 42nd Street, represented by the pinkish dot on the map above. We were across from the New York Public Library, and as I clutched a steel mesh garbage can while pondering whether the correct term for "heart attack" was myocardial infraction or myocardial infarction (turns out, it's the latter), I could swear those majestic lion statues were going to come to life and devour us like the sweaty fattened zebras that we were.

After that quick break, which fortunately did not require the efforts of a well-charged defibrillator, Mike and I staggered back to the office, and I settled into a semi-coma as I cooled off in city-office-standard air conditioning.

And thought I thought to myself, slumped in my chair trying to pantomime the motions of office work, "That was a bad idea," I had no regrets. In future episodes, however, I would have several regrets.