You are what you eat?

I hope this saying isn't true because I've gone through some strange eating habits in the past. And if you are what you eat, I'm disturbing and unnatural. I started thinking about my weird food eating the other day when I decided to top off my chocolate chip peanut butter cookie stack (and banana ice cream) with the trio of fries (sweet potato, parmesan, and some spicy one I can't remember the name of) at Tillman's. Because doesn't that just sound like it will all go so well together? For some reason I thought so. Looking back, eating that food in that order wasn't my best call. This was one of those decisions that tasted good at the time...and then my tummy regretted later.

That's usually how my food eating habits go. You see, I love food SO much  that I have problems with the whole "stop eating when you feel like you might explode" concept. I just had a huge dinner but there's free pizza available for the taking...yes please. I'm already stuffed but that dessert looks really yummy...I'll take two, thanks. Maybe I don't need lunch because I'm still full from the ten pancakes I had for breakfast...no way jose.

My proudest and most ridiculous/embarrassing food moments come from my childhood. To this day, my family STILL makes fun of me for how I used to eat two of my favorite fast food meals.

The Flattened Hamburgers at McDonald's

Picture this: An 8-year old girl walks up to the counter at McDonald's. Does she want a Happy Meal? Nope. Make that a double cheeseburger meal with a large order of fries and a Sprite, please. I'm not talking about a cheeseburger with two meat patties. I'm talking two separate burgers. Because clearly, one just wasn't enough to fill out my adolescent frame. But of course, I still wasn't convinced this was enough food.

Cue my stroke of genius. In my little brain, I decided  that if I would flatten the burgers it would increase the surface area. Obviously a larger surface area of burger means more bites for me and more food. I was such a bright child. So every time I went to McDonald's, I went through the process of ordering more food than I could carry and flattening my cheeseburgers. I then had to eat the burgers fast enough so they didn't have time to un-flatten. People judged (as they should have), my family laughed (it was much deserved), and I ate every last bite.

The Mayonnaise Overload

Before I start this story, I should first tell you that I am completely grossed out by mayonnaise now (most likely due to the amount of mayo I consumed as a child). Mayonnaise freaks me out. If it freaks you out, too, this childhood food habit might freak you out (it pains me just to recount). You've been warned.

So, around the same time that I was ordering my flattened hamburgers I was also ordering footlong turkey sub sandwiches from Subway. My ideal sandwich required just 3 ingredients: white bread, turkey, and LOTS of mayonnaise. My conversation with the Subway employee usually went something like this:

"Hi, I'll have a footlong turkey sandwich on white bread."
"Don't you want a kids meal?"  "Are you sure you can eat all that?"  "Did you say a footlong?"
"Yes, I want a footlong please."
"OK...what else do you want on your sandwich?"
"Just mayonnaise. LOTS of mayonnaise."
"Is that enough?"
"A little more please...little more...little more...that's good."

And because that wasn't bad enough, I would beg my mother to let me walk across the parking lot to Rex's Chicken so I could get a side order of mashed potatoes with extra gravy as my side dish. Who needs chips? Clearly having my potatoes in mashed form went so much better with my sandwich than potatoes in chip form (how dull!). I remember one sandwich/mashed potatoes meal in particular. The gracious Subway employee who was making my sandwich offered to WRITE MY NAME IN MAYONNAISE on my sandwich. Yes, this actually happened. She even wrote in cursive. That mental image you've got in your head? The one with the word "Becky" written ornately across pieces of turkey sitting on a stale loaf of white bread? Top it all off with some mashed potatoes and you've got it exactly.

So in retrospect, I guess I have made some sort of progress in my eating habits. I'm still not normal, but at least I'm not as bizarre as my 8-year old self. (Good thing my cottage cheese phase didn't last long either...that one was rough.) You can still judge me, but don't judge the flattened hamburger technique until you've tried it.