This is the closest annual event to home that is sponsored by the International Federation of Competitive Eating, and seems like a great place to start.

A couple of weeks ago, I was out having dinner with Brandon and Jaime, and they watched me eat an entire pizza by myself.  I was hungry, but they insisted I should enter the Nathan’s Famous Hot Dog Eating Contest.

I figured I should probably start off on an even other than the Super Bowl of eating contests, so I hit up the Major League Eating website to find out what other contests are out there.  Turns out there’s one three hours away in a couple of weeks.  Object: Tamales.

So on Labour Day, we decided to head on over to Pancho’s (all you can eat!) to begin my training.

The girl at the buffet line seemed bemused that I would request “as many tamales as would fit” on my plate.  She needed a number.

“I’ll start with a dozen”

That dozen lasted all of six minutes.

A second batch was on its way as I completed the initial dozen, but that batch was so sub-par (even by Pancho’s standards) that I couldn’t keep them down.  It wasn’t that I was full; I followed up the crushed tamales with a pair of enchiladas and a sopapilla.

It wasn’t record time by anyone’s calculation.  Eater X set the world tamale record last year in Lewsiville at 71 in ten minutes.  The second-place guy was up there at 51.  But since I’d never had a tamale before, setting a twelve-minute pace of 24 isn’t that shabby.  Wasn’t that pretty, either.

I’ll keep working on it.