They call it a paczki, pronounced punch-key, but when you are trying to eat them fast in a five-minute eating contest there is no name for them except over-filling.
The Polish doughnuts, made by Eddy’s Bake Shop on Main Street, are thicker and more doughy than the American jelly doughnuts.
They are stuffed with sweet fillings that are maybe twice as thick as the raspberry or strawberry jelly stuffed into an American doughnut.
Eating two and a half of them in five minutes was all I reasonably could do at the contest held on the morning of Fat Tuesday, the traditional last day of indulgence before the season of Christian Lent begins with Ash Wednesday.
Eating them faster wasn’t possible for me, because I was chewing and tasting them, at least a little.
The guys around me, who consumed as many 10 in five minutes, were not chewing at all. They were just swallowing chunks of bitten-off pieces and washing them down with water.The sugar buzz was so intense for some of the guys at the table their hands were shaking.
I chose to wash mine down with a cup of coffee. I knew I wasn’t going to come close to winning the $200 prize, so I figured I would just enjoy the experience as much as possible and eat continuously, if not as quickly as the guys around me.
It’s like a vacation — it’s not the quantity of them, but the quality of them, that does you the most good. There were probably 14 guys there and a few of them were near to throwing up.
When it was over, guys were covered in prune jelly, soaked with prune jelly. One guy had prune jelly all over his pants. The guy next to me had jelly all over his T‑shirt and face. Beards were covered with it.
I didn’t win, but I figured, I could easily go for the 40 days of Lent now, without eating so much as a chocolate chip cookie.
Why going without sweets is pleasing to the Lord, I can’t say and surely can’t comprehend, but these are the traditions of Fat Tuesday.
New Orleans has its Mardi Gras; Ansonia has its paczkis.
And I knew pretty certainly that with two and a half paczkis in me, I was probably going to be a just a little bit fatter for sure.
I’m a guy who gains weight too easily, sometimes just by looking at lasagna and not even eating it, lol, so I don’t think I would want to be the guy that swallowed 10 of them.
