Fast Food Follies and Drive-Thru Disasters

My Two Passions: Cars and Calories. 

My folks and I enjoyed a recent screening of The Founder, the biopic of Ray Kroc of McDonald's fast food fame. Its a terrific film that captures the hunger of a traveling salesman as he nurtures a good idea and helps it blossom into a big sack of greasy, delicious hamburgers.

Its also about greed, milkshakes, and horrible relationships.

There's also a Plymouth in there somewhere.

See the film. You'll like it.

All of this discussion brings me to today's topic: Fast Food Follies.

Culver's, where butter is in everything but the soda. Maybe that, too. 

My wife's family never shied away from a rolling culinary challenge when she was younger. She recalls stories of trying to split a Breadaux pizza with her mother, sister, and brother, all while darting in and out of traffic to violin lessons after school. That's a pretty tough food to tackle at 55 miles per hour!

I've made the mistake of trying to house a Subway meatball sandwich on the way to work. Let's just say I needed to invest in Shout fabric stain pre-treater after that. Bad idea.

We've all made mistakes at the drive-thru window for the sake of saving time. Sometimes a sack full of Jack-In-The-Box tacos seem like a great idea on a road trip, but you'd better plan ahead and make sure there's a rest area somewhere along the route.

My high school pal Chris and I *may* have attempted to scarf 35 soft-shell Taco Bell tacos in the parking lot one evening. That ended in a DNF and I would forever be grateful that I didn't force myself to eat more. There was a similar McNugget challenge. I won that one. I think 40 said nuggets disappeared under the warm glow of marquee lights at the Lindenhurst McDonalds that night.

Under just the right set of circumstances, I may be persuaded to repeat that attempt. My health insurance is paid up.

So is my life insurance.

Photo Credit: Pintrest

Perhaps the worst drive-thru purchase in my entire life came in the winter of 2004 during a work trip to Detroit. My engineer colleague and I were headed from southern Indiana to Motown to work out some troubles with a new radio automation system, and we were going to spend a day there. We left town in the afternoon, and didn't eat anything beforehand. Somewhere just outside of Detroit we passed a sign for a White Castle, and we both looked at one another and said "Sliders?" The turn signal went on, and the car suddenly darted off the freeway to certain doom.

While perusing the sparse White Castle menu sitting in the comfort of our rental Camry, my coworker and I decided we were hungry enough for a 'Crave Case™,' of burgers. Now, the total number of burgers in a Crave Case™ is 30, which is something like 4200 calories. I believe we ate each and every one of those things before we pulled into our motel parking lot.

The remainder of the evening was spent durability testing the plumbing in the Extended Stay suites in Southfield, Michigan. The next morning we both greeted one another in the lobby with the same sullen face. We were ashamed of ourselves. The poor Camry smelled like a White Castle griddle. I feel sorry for whoever had to detail it the next time, there were little onion bits everywhere.

So, yeah. That's my story.

What's the worst thing you've eaten 'on the go?' Share it up, let me hear some horror stories so I can feel better about my poor food decisions.

Oh, and can you pass me the TUMS?

-D