Okay, here’s the deal. I went to a party last night at a friend’s house. It was a “Game Night” which apparently is just like a cocktail party except without cocktails.
Or happiness.
I kid.
(not really.)
I was hesitant to go because after the Drunken Bible Charades Incident of Aught Eight I placed a self-imposed moratorium on parlor games (YOU try making people guess “You are the priest of Melchizedek” in five-inch alligator sling backs after your third caipirinha. NOT THAT EASY. Although I must say all in all the folks at the seminary were VERY understanding) so as I said…hesitant…but I make it a priority to attend any party hosted by any man with a building named after him and so I went.
Yeah.
So anyway, there were gummi bears there. Three pounds of gummi bears. For twelve people. That’s a quarter pound of shiny German ursine confection per person (that’s right; I said ursine. You think I don’t know stuff but I KNOW STUFF OKAY) I’m not a candy person –I prefer my junk food fatty and salty, thank you– but for some reason I thought “Hey! Gummi bears! I haven’t had those in years!” and ate a handful –by which I mean two handfuls– of them.
Friends, now I remember why –aside from my annual day-after-Easter black jellybean bender–I don’t eat candy.
To explain why I’ve devised this handy little SAT-style analogy:
PLUMCAKE : GUMMI BEARS :: VERY SMALL LAB MONKEY : 2 KILOS OF COCAINE
Y’all it was Not Good. I’m hoping to be able to blink again sometime before Saturday.
Today Miss Plumcake wants to know:
Is there a food or food group that turns you into a crazy person? If so, tell me and if there’s an embarrassing story; all the better!
Miss Vicki’s Black Pepper and Lime potato chips. You know how wolves get when another wolf tries to horn in on their share of the kill? Yeah, that’s how I get about those chips. I’ll share them with my husband, but I resent every damn crumb that goes into his mouth instead of mine, and glare daggers at him the entire time. I’m normally a very generous person, but with those chips, all I can think is “Mine, mine, MINE!!!”
Comment by La Petite Acadienne — January 22, 2009 @ 5:05 pm
While this confession will reveal how totally white trash I am, I have no control/dignity/pride when it comes to sausage cheese balls. Yes, I mean those quarter sized rounds made of only 3 ingredients; Owens Country Sausage, Bisquick, and cheddar cheese. Artery clogging goodness that I will take a sistah down to get the last one.
Comment by AmelieWannabe — January 22, 2009 @ 5:30 pm
Mountain Dew turns me into a madperson. I really avoid it these days!
Comment by BrieCS — January 22, 2009 @ 6:10 pm
I do not know what it is that The Cheesecake Factory puts in their cheesecake but it is very very dangerous. I know it’s not simply sugar because I eat a lot of candy and I have never had the kind of reaction I had to splitting a piece of cheesecake with a friend. Ten minutes later we are in the ladies room *wired* – bouncing and dancing and singing along with the piped in music (Ricky Martin’s ‘The Cup of Life’) while everyone that comes in looks at us funny.
Comment by KellyGirl — January 22, 2009 @ 6:38 pm
Red Vines. And when you eat a lot of them (think half a tub) it will turn certain bodily functions red. Which of course makes you think you have an alien chestburster in your intestine and you freak.
Until you remember you ate a half a tub of (@*!^ Red Vines.
Comment by Liz B. — January 22, 2009 @ 6:52 pm
Amelie, I had my first sausage cheese ball this past Christmas and good LORD I had no idea what I’d been missing my whole life. I would have gladly consumed the entire plate.
Comment by Plumcake — January 22, 2009 @ 7:17 pm
Liz B., Red Vines are of the serpent. They’re EEEVIL. The only true licorice is black licorice. Mmmmm. I can only eat it once a year, but when I do I eat so many that I lose feeling in my chin. True story!
Comment by Plumcake — January 22, 2009 @ 7:19 pm
Dunkin Donuts makes some iced coffee concoction with a cutesy name – a COOL-ata, perhaps?
I consider myself a fairly caffiene-dependent life form, and have at least one cup of french press daily. I don’t react to sugar under most circumstances. But this sweetened coffee milkshake thing had my hands shaking and my heart racing! And I blathered on like a doof. Never again.
Comment by Betsy — January 22, 2009 @ 9:27 pm
I had a similar Gummi bear experience, except these were (unbeknownst to me) sugarfree Gummi bears. Unfortunately, I am extremely sensitive to the alcohol sugars that they use to make sugar free candy. They have the effect of a laxative on me. So let me add my own SAT analogy: Me: sugar free Gummi Bears:: Any other human:2 lbs Ex Lax. Needless to say, I spent most of the evening in my friends’ bathroom. Now these “friends” always offer me sugar free candy when I visit!!
Comment by Michelle — January 22, 2009 @ 10:29 pm
They don’t make me hyper, but there are certain kinds of mint that I will eat until I want to puke. And then as soon as the feeling recedes a little, I will eat more. Until they are gone.
Comment by Janey — January 23, 2009 @ 1:04 am
Janey, I did that just this week with a box of Fanny May Mint Meltaways.
Once, when I was pregnant, my sister ate the last of a jar of spiced apple rings I had hidden in the refrigerator. She had no idea they were The Touchy Pregnant Woman’s Very Own Special Food, and it unleashed a fury in me that I’m still embarrassed about almost eleven years later.
Comment by Bingo — January 23, 2009 @ 1:22 am
Oh Janey me too. Those little pastel things with the nonpareils? I will eat them until I cannot eat them anymore, then I’ll take a walk around the block or something and O LOOK MORE MINTS!
Comment by Plumcake — January 23, 2009 @ 1:35 am
Leave me alone in a room with a baguette and a hunk of triple-cream brie and when you come back it will look like the site of a particularly gruesome Manson-family-style slaughter in a fromagerie. I will be clutching my stomach like it contains the spawn of Lucifer and I will have Not. One. Iota. Of regret.
Also? Peanut M&Ms. They’re so small & innocuous & you think, oh, I’ll just eat a couple. Hah. That way madness lies.
Comment by Style Spy — January 23, 2009 @ 10:26 am
Oh, Style Spy, here I was thinking that I don’t really have any “crazy” foods, but then you mentioned peanut M&Ms. I don’t eat those any more for very good reason. Once I start eating them, I cannot stop. I shove them down my gullet by the handful. I once went through a several-months-long peanut M&M bender about nine years ago. I was buying the biggest bags I could find at the grocery store every week. I gained at least 20 lbs. I eventually gave them up for those mini Nutter Butter cookies, which had the same effect on me. I had to swear off both of them in order to lose the 20 lbs.
Comment by Cat — January 23, 2009 @ 10:52 am
Those ghirardelli chocolate square things…the ones with mint inside (hmm, seems like mint is a thing for most of us!) I’ll eat one, and then two and…hey, um, where’d they go?
Comment by Genevieve — January 23, 2009 @ 10:52 am
Gen, did you see those Ghirardelli peppermint bark bars this holidays? because let me tell you those things go away in like three seconds flat and you don’t even remember what happened to them.
Comment by Violet — January 23, 2009 @ 11:00 am
Really any sugar, and that includes alcohol, can send me over the edge. It’s the price I’m paying for advancing in years. It’s all about enforced clean living. Sigh.
I will say I was introduced to chocolate covered gummi bears over the holidays. I received a small bag from a coworker. Five minutes later, they were gone. And I don’t even like gummi bears. But there was something about these.
Comment by slownews — January 23, 2009 @ 11:18 am
For me, it’s cheesecake. Doesn’t matter where it came from, even the kind from Chick-Fil-A, I don’t care. If you try to take it from me, to quote Mariah Carey, I WILL HUNT YOU DOWN.
Also, a friend of mine made the decision to become a vegetarian when he was a teenager. However, on the rare occasion he eats meat, you get the aforementioned small monkey on cocaine.
Then there was a former roommate who was bouncing off the walls after taking some saw palmetto. That was something you just had to be there for.
Comment by ChloeMireille — January 23, 2009 @ 11:33 am
Mine changes. Most recently it has been Dove Dark Chocolate covered Almonds. Apparently a bag is a serving; fortunately they come in reasonably small bags. Before that it was See’s Candy brand Peanut Brittle, which comes in various boxes from a 1/4 pound to a pound. Again, apparently a box (no matter what size) is a serving, because I don’t stop eating until the box is empty.
And before that and always it has been pistachios, which I will eat until I feel so sick that I want to vomit (although I never do).
Comment by Kai Jones — January 23, 2009 @ 1:37 pm
That white, fluffy bakery frosting, which isn’t even very good. I might as well shoot meth straight into my veins. Or…whatever it is you do with meth.
Comment by Amy K. — January 23, 2009 @ 2:05 pm
Kai, I have a friend who gets unreasonably excited by pistachios.
Funny story:
We’d both just come back from a party at Ladybird Johnson’s old place. I’d just moved and the gas hadn’t been turned on yet, and it was going to drop below freezing. Out of the kindness of his heart he let me crash at his place and as we sat down in our dignified stupors when he all of the sudden JUMPED up and asked “Do you want pistachios?!” I said sure, it was probably time to eat a little something, and he said “It’s ALWAYS time for pistachios!!!!”
Comment by Plumcake — January 23, 2009 @ 2:23 pm
It IS always time for pistachios. When I was single and living alone, I couldn’t be arsed to do much cooking, so I would often get a 500 gram tub of pistachios on my way home and eat those for supper.
Dammit, you guys. Now I’m craving pistachios. And when a pregnant lady craves something, there is none of this “wait until the craving goes away” nonsense.
Plus, is it just me, or is “pistachios” one of those words that’d be really fun to say repeatedly while stoned?
Comment by La Petite Acadienne — January 23, 2009 @ 2:36 pm
My famous chili dip – which involves a very complicated recipe consisting of one can of chili (hormel or denisen’s, preferably) and 1 block of cream cheese + tortilla chips. I only make it when I’m bringing it to a party, since it’s so artery-clogging and if I made it at home I would eat it all myself. That is the theory anyway. Then I get to the party, and end up with the bowl of chili dip on my lap, eating until I am impossibly full. Other party goers only get a few chips in edgewise.
Comment by jen209 — January 23, 2009 @ 3:59 pm
Oh my god I couldn’t think of anything and then jen reminded me. So there’s this dip that is a favorite in my circle of friends, so much so that it is referred to only as The Dip even though it’s real name is Trader Joe’s Spinach and Artichoke Dip. It is cheezy and warm and so delicious that at every party it is brought to literal feeding frenzies begin as soon as the dip hits the table and continue until someone is practically licking the bowl clean about ten minutes later. I have seen people burn their tongues eating it because they couldn’t wait another minute for it to cool down. When it showed up at a dear friend’s birthday party, the birthday girl herself was lucky to get two pita chips worth before it was snarfed down.
If Trader Joe’s ever discontinues that dip, we may all have to commit mass suicide.
Comment by Evie — January 23, 2009 @ 4:36 pm
My weakness has always been Jelly Belly jellybeans. I’ve been known to eat an entire pound in one day! Especially if they’re the sour ones, mmmmm.
Comment by novelreason — January 23, 2009 @ 5:05 pm
Cream cheese. If it’s in the house, I will eat it. On a bagel, in a dessert, in frosting, on a sandwich, it doesn’t matter. My favorite way is on a Ritz cracker with Pickapeppa sauce. I could eat (and have eaten!) a whole sleeve of crackers and 8oz of cream cheese in one sitting that way, and still want more.
Comment by Elaine — January 23, 2009 @ 6:10 pm
“Those little pastel things with the nonpareils? ”
Oh, God, like crack.
Speaking of which, I know a guy who has smoked the crack from time to time and he says “It just tastes soo good. Like pistachios.”
Comment by Janey — January 23, 2009 @ 6:26 pm
Violet: YES. I do not buy them. I also don’t buy any of the square things, but I do go to my parents’ house for Christmas, and they can buy them in the big bag and not eat all of them…
Comment by Genevieve — January 24, 2009 @ 1:37 pm
Oreos. I will eat those until they are gone, and then go back to the cupboard and hope more showed up suddenly. I love Oreos, all the time, any time. There is also an Oreo hierarchy: Double Stuf Oreos, regular Oreos, Oreos with mint cream, all other Oreos.
I might go get some.
Comment by Lyndsey — January 24, 2009 @ 2:48 pm
There’s a couple of foods that send me into serious NOM NOM NOM binges, the kind where you will cut a bitch if they try to take any of your precious. It changes for me, but right now, the main ones are pistachios, gluten free corn pasta, and these gluten free cheese puffs that I can only find at organic food stores that are unfortunately (or fortunately, for my arteries) not near my apartment.
The odd one is the corn pasta. If I have corn penne in my house, I will eat it with butter and some freshly grated parm for pretty much every meal until it’s gone. And then I’ll be like “man, I wish Organza was closer, I want some corn pasta.”
Comment by Abbey — January 24, 2009 @ 4:57 pm
For years I could go to a movie without eating jujubes.They were made by the Heide candy people. No matter that they always stuck to my back teeth and that I spend much of my time trying to dislodge them without sticking fingers in my mouth but always ended up with a few that I had to pry out. I hardly ever had a date (my father said I talked too much and MEN HATED THAT) so this was like a private fetish. Then they vanished. But gummi bears came..perfect little translucent gems that never stuck in my mouth. Some man didn’t mind that I talked too much and children arrived and gummi bears morphed into snakes and other weird shapes but I am always true to them and since I go the movies incessantly I buy them at Duane Read for $2.95 rather than at the movies. Still miss jujubes.
Comment by Peggye — January 26, 2009 @ 4:27 pm
You don’t need to thank me. Just buy me some dark-chocolate covered orange peels…
Comment by rabrab — January 26, 2009 @ 5:26 pm
Dammit, there was supposed to be a link there. Oh well, go to CandyDirect.com and search for jujubes. 7 pounds for 21 dollars…
Comment by rabrab — January 26, 2009 @ 5:30 pm
I know that it’s supposed to be so bad for you but I have eaten an entire baguette sliced into crostinis and toasted in the oven with bruschetta from Trader Joe’s on it with a drizzle of olive oil for dinner. I am craving it now. Thank you VERY much!
Comment by AmazonAngelle — January 26, 2009 @ 6:33 pm
There are things I will not stop eating – like popcorn. I used to help out a the concession stand at college and after four hours of handing out popcorn I’d take all the rest of it home in a grocery bag and eat until I went into a salt coma. Awesome.
And then there’s the original question – foods that make you INSANE. In the very poorest part of my graduate career Starbucks marketing people hung around Boston college campuses and gave out free bottles of frappucinos to anyone who would fill out a survey. It was sugar and caffeine and calories and free in a time when I had a $20 a week grocery budget. But after the first time or two I just couldn’t do it. I’d start to feel like the top of my head was going to come off and I’d shake all the way through class and then compulsively walk the three miles home in the rain or sleet and come in looking like a zombie and scare the bejeezus out of my roommates. I still shudder when i see those things in the mini-mart.
Comment by Cedar — January 27, 2009 @ 8:39 pm
checked it out. great stuff. good idea., However, I don’t see the relevance of this post, although the content is great, but this is mainly a bears website.
Comment by Bears — February 4, 2009 @ 2:09 pm
Oh dear lord,Hercheys chocolate kisses.I’ll put some in my purse for”the times when you need a quick chocolate boost(Read:when you are in the middle of Science class about to knaw the eraser off your pencil) and they will be gone.I Absolutely ADORE them
among my other cant eat just one foods:Movie theatre popcorn. im usualy the one who holds the bucket when everyones done,and i usualy have to put it on the floor,lest I eat the whole tub.
among my Healthier food obsessions,Salted peanuts.I love those things,its salty,crunchy,peanutty deliciousness.
And last,but certainly not least,Candycanes.Peppermints. I could buy a big dollar bag at the walmart,and be through them in a week. See the hersheys kiss reason above
Comment by jessie — February 17, 2009 @ 9:56 pm