Book Giveaway: Are you a glutton?
Posted by Ben Garfinkel on Tuesday, February 1st, 2011Tags for this Article: Bob Blumer, cookbook, Glutton for Pleasure, kitchen etiquette, monty python, mr. creosote, surreal cook
We recently received a copy of Bob Blumer’s latest book, Glutton for Pleasure to check out. I thumbed through it and it’s filled with great tips such as Kitchen Feng Shiu, vibrant photography and looks like a lot of fun (Man vs. Can).
We’ve got a copy of the book to give away! Just tell us a story about some personal gluttony and we’ll pick the best one February 15th. That gives you lots of time to stock the freezer with gelato and finish it all in one crazy, 3am binge.
Also, look for our video interview with Bob coming later this month!
My housemates and I live right beside one of Ottawa’s 24-hour diners best known for its AMAZING poutine. Over the summer we each kept individual tallies of our visits to the diner. By the end of the summer our collective tally was 5.
Now, that’s a lot of fries…
I was at work and had the biggest craving for lemon tarts. With mouth watering and my taste buds feeling the tanginess of lemons already, all I could think about was how I could get some lemons. Needless to say, productivity was low that day.
During my drive home, I stopped at my local grocery store and decided to buy lemons to make a lemon tart. But the lemons looked so good — shiny and the nicest shade of yellow I have ever seen. So naturally I bought a bag of lemons and decided to make 10 things with lemons.
All I ate that week consisted of lemony goodness: lemon tart, lemon meringue pie, lemon blueberry cakes, lemon poppy seed muffins, lemon ice cream, lemon curd, lemon cheesecake, lemon loaf, lemon cupcakes, and lastly, lemonade to finish the lemons.
The week ended with me being sick and having to go through a sugar detox. And let’s not mention that I smelled like butter! But my lemon love has remained and I try to eat something lemon everyday.
there was one particular dim sum event where steamer baskets were piled so high I couldn’t see people across the table from me. and I’m pretty sure we all went back to work and laid on the floor for the afternoon. awful.
@Gord my (tiny, female) classmate in university ate a poutine every Friday for an entire semester.
For some reason, potato chips are my crazy addiction. I find myself buying huge, sumo size bags of potato chips, and keeping it all to myself. Back off, get your own chips! One time, I even spent more than $20 on one trip, all devoted to potato chips… Hey, at least I’m getting one vegetable group in, right? Favorites will have to be kettle potato chips, especially rippled ones. They seem to have that greater surface area to be able to pack in my flavor onto the chip. Overanalyzing much? If only I could eat chips everyday… wait, I already do! No wonder my pants are getting a little tight lately. But it’s so worth it!
Three winters ago I spent a few weeks in Montreal, and we decided we’d spend some time to this old log cabin in the Laurentiens. The place was ancient – it was a friend’s cabin – and it wasn’t properly winterized.
Now “winterized” isn’t a term you use when you grow up in the Lower Mainland, but I found out the hard way that this cabin hadn’t been properly insolated. It was late December and -25 Celsius outside, and we had to dig ourselves through snowbanks just to ENTER the cabin.
Inside? Inside the cabin, it was -2. There were cracks in the foundation around the fire place and holes through some of the logs so you could see outside from within. There was no running water, so we had to crack through the ice in the local stream to get some, and when we finally lit a fire, the damper wasn’t working, so we smoked ourselves in.
Nevertheless, we slept like babies in our sleeping bags and when we woke up, we made breakfast. An entire package of bacon was set aflame on the wood burning fireplace and we cooked countless eggs in all that grease. We probably ate 10 pieces of bacon each and at least 3-4 eggs. Disgusting in retrospect, but delicious as hell, and still a memorable story to this day!
I was about 7 months pregnant and was ravenous all the time. One day, my husband and I went to see a late afternoon movie…one that would start around 4:45pm and end after the usual dinner time. We were within walking distance of many restaurants but by that time I was seriously craving red meat & mashed potato; my kind of comfort food. We eventually found ourselves having a late dinner at Sophie’s Cosmic Café where I went crazy over their Arbutus burger & a big mound of mashed potatoes with gravy. (Not my finest moment!)
So when all was said and done, the plate wasn’t entirely empty (garnish, a few smudges…) but now, neither was I. I felt very much like Mr. Creosote (see opening photo above) with my big tummy and my undersized fleece top not quite covering my lower hemisphere with a grey t-shirt underneath. However, looking closer at my tummy, I saw the remnants of my dinner: crumbs, mashed potato chunks and drops of gravy.
10-15 minutes after being served. My moment of gluttony. Like I said, not my finest hour. ;)
I usually make my chocolate chip cookies, not to make cookies, but to eat the dough. I have, on at least one occasion, not even turned the stove on to bake any of them into actual cookies but to just sit there eating dough, with a glass of red wine while watching some trash TV.
I’m sure the urge to vomit came and went but I was in the midst of a sugar coma at the time so didn’t notice… or care.
My immediate personal gluttony is the cardamom hot cross buns I made last night for a faith based study group. I’ve downed 3 this morning. I think I had 4 at the study. They are somewhere between “to die for” and certainly to squabble over. And what were we studying … C.S. Lewis’ Screwtape Letters. You know, letters from a senior demon, Screwtape, to his nephew, a junior “tempter” named Wormwood. Screwtape is telling Wormwood to “concentrate all our efforts on Gluttony of Delicacy, not Gluttony of Excess.” Hmmmmmm….. faith, sin, good food, bad food, delicacies … all I know I’m going to look guilty when my wife asks “WHERE ARE THE BUNS?!!!!” Hmmmm…. maybe I’ll eat just one more ….
Congrats to Mojgan for her story about overindulging on lemons. Email us to arrange for your copy of “Glutton for Pleasure” by Bob Blumer.