It's like walking on hot coals, except you eat them

I have several interests including, but not limited to:

• confidently making up answers to questions I don't know the real answer to to see if anyone believes me,
• storytelling,
• making people laugh and
• putting people up to challenges. Seemingly the majority of these challenges involve food or eating things, like pet fish.

My latest food challenge involved my boss and Buffalo Wild Wings' "Blazin' Wing Challenge." My boss, Cindy, is from Texas and loves hot, spicy food. If we go to a mexican restaurant she asks them to bring the hottest salsa out and I'm pretty sure she eats jalapenos like most people eat carrots. It's awesome.

So sometime this past summer it came up that she always ordered the wing sauce one notch lower than the hottest at BWW. We will now switch to a dialog format to really make you feel like you were there.

Erin: "Well, if you can do that one, you should totally do the Blazin' Wing Challenge."

Cindy: "What's that?"

Erin: "You have to eat something like 12 wings with the Blazin' wing sauce in 6 minutes"

Cindy: "Oh, easy I could do that."

Erin: "Ok, that's what I want to do for my birthday lunch next year. Please!?!?! You can spend your maternity leave training for it if you need to."

Cindy: "Alright, I'll do it."

Erin: "SERIOUSLY!?! I can't for my birthday now!"

Skip ahead 6 or so odd months later and it's time for my birthday lunch at work.

The task: Eat 12 traditional wings with the Blazin' wing sauce in 6 minutes. You have to get all the meat off the bone, but not the "gristle or cartilage" (I really am quoting there, the word cartilage make me gag so I wouldn't voluntarily use it). You cannot use any dressing, eat anything else, like fries, you cannot drink and you cannot wipe your face or hands.

Here Cindy is with her 12 wings. She made all of us smell the wings so we could sort of know what she was going to be enduring.

Here is Dave, the Regional Training Manager, announcing over the sound system that she was doing the challenge.

The first wing.

We negotiated the photos that would be taken. We could capture the first wing and at the end, but nothing in between. I also feel it's important to mention I offered her my hair band to pull her hair back, but she scoffed saying, "I'm not going to have this all over my face, amateur. I'm going to be very dainty."

And she was! Look at that, no sauce on her face. I get sauce on my ear just when I'm eating wings at a normal pace, let a lone 12 in 6 minutes!

But I digress...did she conquer the challenge or not?!!?

She nailed it in a time of 5 minutes 58 seconds.

Bravo, Boss Lady!

And if any of you readers out there are inspired now to do this challenge please do and report back. There was one guy who apparently did the challenge in 56 seconds and I'm not entirely sure how that is humanly possible.

The Great Nutella Challenge

Here at unfiltered nonsense we pride ourselves on quality conversations and debating the real facts of life. Recently, I blogged about entering a sweepstakes to win a case of Nutella as a favor to my friend Amanda. Well, my friends, that particular blog spurred a frenzy of activity with no fewer than three friends coming to the defense of Nutella saying it was a delicious treat.

Always trying to broaden my horizons, Becca threw down "The Great Nutella Challenge," try Nutella and report back.

Obstacle #1

Find Nutella in the grocery store. My usual grocery store, The Neighborhood Wal-mart, did not carry it. Luckily, this past weekend I was back home and found a small jar in a Super Wal-mart in Colby, KS.

Obstacle #2

Remember to take the Nutella back to KC with me when I left home. Fail. When I called Mom and told her to try the stuff for me and report her findings, she passed. Apparently, we Garretts like to judge food by it's cover. A 40-50 car pileup on I-70 deterred me from stopping at a grocery store on my way home Sunday night. (Fear not I was not involved in the accident, but it took me 45 minutes to go 4 miles, 5 hours after the initial pileup happen).

Obstacle #3

Try to find Nutella again, this time at Price Chopper. At first look there was no Nutella, but in what could only be described as God's answer to someone's prayers, I looked to the very back of the shelving and in the far back, an entire arms-length reach away from me, was one last jar of Nutella.

I cut up a banana, per Becca's recommendations, and took my first bite of Nutella. Amanda suggested I just eat it by the spoonful, but I wasn't that brave.

(real quick unrelated note, I found out my camera has a "food" setting and I can't wait to take more pictures of food now)

Final verdict?

One thumb up because the other one had to hold the camera. Nutella is surprisingly delicious and wildly bad for you. Seriously! In a 2 tablespoon serving size there are 200 calories and 100 of those are from fat. So eat up friends, but please do so in moderation, you could tub up real fast.