I remember the first time I tried a St. Clement Strawberry Shortcake very well.
It was just a couple of weeks ago, at the Florida Strawberry Festival’s media party. We had just eaten dinner, and I made sure to save some room for one of those bad boys. When I took my first bite, I knew it was the best strawberry shortcake I’d ever had.
Which is exactly what I told our editor. Without missing a beat, he asked me if I wanted to try my hand in the festival’s strawberry shortcake-eating contest. I accepted.
“This should be fun,” I thought to myself.
I can put down a lot of food when I want to, but I’d never tried to eat a ton of dessert in one sitting. Leading up to the event, I assumed (without doing any research) that they would just hand us bowl after bowl of shortcake and ask us to eat as many as we can within a given time limit.
Nope! It’s not that simple. When I got to the Stingray Chevrolet Entertainment Tent, they were showing off these four-pound monstrosities of strawberry goodness. Eating one of these things was going to be like scaling the Aggro Crag in Nickelodeon GUTS, except with a 10-minute time limit.
And, of course, this ended up being the one event that seemingly every media outlet decided to cover. All eyes were really on me.
So, I changed my goal on the fly: Rather than stick with the “finish everything at all costs” plan, I switched to “do not puke in front of the video cameras and Florida Strawberry Festival Queen and Court.” After all, a personal victory is still a victory.
The guy to my left was competing with a co-worker, and the guy to my right just said, “I’m hungry.” They both looked worried when the little Aggro Crags were placed in front of them but immediately started planning their moves.
“Mine’s all broken up already,” the guy to my right said, examining his cracked shortcake. “I can go right into the middle now, and it’s easier when they take the spoons away.”
I stopped rooting for myself before the competition began. An older gentleman two seats to my right, whose name was Sam, told the crowd he entered the contest, because he had never won anything in his life. He was hoping to change that by killing this plate of Aggro Crag.
Shortly afterward, we got started. Here’s how it went down:
0:00: I hope I don’t break this little plastic spoon. I’m not too confident about its chances right now.
0:20: This thing is way too tasty for an eating contest. How can I make this not enjoyable?
1:00: A woman from St. Clement approaches me and pats me on the back. “You’re too polite, honey!” No, y’all just made something that’s way more delicious than an eating contest food should ever be.
1:30: Hey, this isn’t so bad. I should just focus on my food and (looking to the right) holy schnikes, that guy’s going hard! I have to match that pace!
2:00: Why did I not eat the shortcake part until just now? This is fantastic. How do people prefer the biscuit to this?
3:00: Did the emcee just say someone was getting close? That’s preposterous.
4:30: If I eat any of that whipped cream right now, everything will come back out through the “in” door.
5:30: There is no way I will finish this thing in the time limit, so I’m slowing down.
6:00: I feel like death.
7:00: If I eat this with my hands, it’s like that scene from “Hook” where the kids have an imaginary feast and eat with their hands. Except watching all of us go is probably a lot more gross than that.
7:15: Maybe I should put some whipped cream on my face and get a nice Michael McDonald look for Amber Jurgensen’s camera.
7:23: Wait, someone finished the whole thing already? THANK GOODNESS.
The co-worker of the guy to my left polished it all off, save for a few streaks of whipped cream. He might have even eaten the strawberry stem. But, they weighed his plate and declared him the winner. Sam and the rest of us gave it our best effort and, to our credit, nobody had to get up and use the white wastebasket while the clock was running.
Somehow, I didn’t puke at all after we were done. I almost did when I got up from my chair, and when I briefly spoke with Amber and Florida Strawberry Festival court member Macaley Barrow afterward, but a superhuman effort allowed me to keep my dignity. I achieved the second goal I had set for myself, and one out of two ain’t bad.
Unfortunately, though, I can’t even look at a strawberry shortcake for at least another week or two.