Ah, the pancake. The beautiful perfectly round, fully loaded pancake. This morning i was at Smitty’s and it was awesome, and gross, and glorious….as any ‘pancake eating contest’ should be. My mission there was two fold…to celebrate Fat Tuesday or Shrove Tuesday and to celebrate ‘THE PANCAKE’, and everytime I am around a pancake…there is usually a contest of some sort involved. This morning was no exception.
Usually I take on Nancy Critchley. She works for the United Way. She sort of my ‘doppleganger’ which is sort of your identical twin on this planet that you’ve never met…except with Nancy, I know her and we look nothing alike. Except we are sisters, soul sisters, and fiercely competitive with each other. This morning however, she could not make it – so she texted in that the principal that I was on remote with, from Inglewood Elementary, was to be her stand-in for the competition.
At first i thought there was no way this teacher, this ‘principal’, was going to say ‘yes’ to the competition, but i’ve quickly learned to the power of asking people to do something while the camera’s are rolling live…the answers tend to be ‘yes’. I held my breath as Leona looked at me after I proposed to her that she was the ‘chosen’ one by Nancy Critchley to compete in the pancake eating contest. Would she do it? Would she not? She is a principal after all. Then, after looking at me, at Jason, back to me, up to the God’s, Principal Leona became the COOLEST principal in all of Edmonton, and said ‘yes’.
Welcome to the world of the pancake eating contest, Principal Leona, you are in for a treat:
At first, when the competition begins, and that warm doughy goodness enters your mouth, you think ‘oh this is in the bag, i am going to shove this bad boy down my gullet and then WATCH OUT competition!!’ You actually look forward to the next bite as you lick the sweet syrup from your lips in preparation for the next bite…then things start to go south when you realize the pancake won’t (go south).
As you put the next bite in, you realize the previous bite is still lodged somewhere between ‘upper throat’ and ‘mid throat’ (don’t quote me on these scientific terms)…and now the area between ‘upper throat’ and ‘lower mouth’ is beginning to fill with pancakes, leaving very little room for the air that has entered thru ‘upper mouth’ to make it’s way thru!
You hope your nasal passages are clear as the ‘breathing thru the nose’ has begun…as you chew on bite 2 while trying to shove bite 1 down thru to ‘lower throat’, you eyes began to scan the table for lubricant. Some sort of lube that will coat the pancake, making it more of a ’slider’ and less of a ’stopper’. Your eyes fix upon the syrup….’Traitor!’ you scream in your head as you originally thought this was your secret weapon…but not at all. Not only does the syrup mixed with pancake act as a thickening agent, it also adds unwanted calories to the contest.
Butter. You grab several packets and start to smear it on the pancake…but then you hear someone whispering ‘dip the pancake in water…dip the pancake in water’….
REALLY?!
Okay. At this point, i’m willing to try anything…The pancake starts to dissolve almost on impact with the glass of water and you think you’ve got it all figured out! Then the watery pancake-like substance goes into your mouth and the taste is so watered-down-batter-revolting…you can feel Bite 1, 2 AND 3 wanting to come back up to see what is ‘a-happening’.
I think that would have been my key to success…but i couldn’t do it. Suddenly the only way for me to win this pancake eating contest was to resort to the good ol’ fashioned way…cheating. I tucked it down my shirt, under my pant leg, threw them onto my competitors plate while they were temporarily blinded from the syrup and whip cream flying up in their face…it was not a proud moment, but it was the only way.
And I still lost. But I lost to the COOLEST PRINCIPAL IN THE WHOLE CITY OF EDMONTON. So, sorta…I won, because how many people can say they got into a pancake eating contest with Principal Leona from Inglewood?! It’s a morning I won’t forget.