Endless Simmer - A Food Blog

As you probably know if you aren’t living under an extraordinarily large rock, it’s Olympics time! Around here, that means one thing: Carb-loading. No, we’re not running the Olympic marathon, we’re merely preparing to stuff our faces while watching the Dream Team play inexplicably mediocre basketball, witness 15-year-old Russian girls twist themselves into unnatural positions, and see athletes from around the globe keel over from pollution inhalation. Now that’s gonna take some serious energy. On our part. Can we say take-out? Here’e a look at our Top Ten Olympic Carb-Loading Foods:

10. Toasted Ravioli

Photo: Dyobmit

The Italians may think they have a leg up on the competition with their gigantic pasta dishes, but we Americans took their pasta and made it our own. How? By breading it and deep-frying it, of course! The St. Louis chefs who invented this tastiness get bonus points for the creatively misleading naming. No one would be crazy enough to order something called fried, breaded ravioli. But toasted ravioli? Sign us up.

Estimated Carbs: 85 grams

9. Fried Chicken and Waffles

Photo: LWY

Who says carb-loading means you gotta give up meat? This Harlem classic gives you all the protein you need, and doesn’t skimp on the sugar. A giant waffle topped with fried chicken, gobs of syrup and butter. Can I get some toast with that?

Estimated Carbs: 100 grams

8. Cinnabon

Photo: Cinnabon

What exactly is in a Cinnabon cinnamon roll, anyway? The official story is “warm dough filled with our legendary Makara cinnamon and topped with freshly made cream cheese frosting.” Now, I think we’ve all tasted cinnamon, dough and cream cheese before, and we know that Cinnabon tastes like none of these things. Every bite is so full of powerful, artificial sugar-y stuff that it’s hard to imagine how they get so much sickly-sweetness into such a small space. However they do it, they deserve an award.

Estimated Carbs: 115 g

7. Pina Colada

Photo: dlisbona

The great thing about mixing cocktails is you can always use a little less of the sweet stuff if you’re counting carbs. Unless you’re using exclusively sweet stuff, of course. Aaaah, the pina colada, a.k.a. adult candy in a glass. Start with a healthy dose of Malibu coconut rum (the kind that smells/tastes like sunblock), and mix with coconut cream and pineapple juice. Top that with a maraschino cherry and a wedge of pineapple. You should be in a coma for the rest of the Olympics.

Estimated Carbs: 120 g

6. Baked Ziti Pizza

Photo: NYPD Pizza

You gotta love watching tourists come into New York pizzerias as their faces go “mmm…oh that looks nice…ok….interesting…WHAT THE HELL IS THAT?” And that’s when you know they’ve caught site of the baked ziti pizza. What a delicious and completely unnecessary invention. Hey, sometimes you can’t decide between pizza and pasta and you just want to eat an entire serving of pasta on top of a plate of pizza. What’s so wrong with that?

Estimated Carbs: 140 g

5. Jamba Juice Peanut Butter Chocolate Moo’d

Photo: Enkrates

It’s so great when you’re responsible enough to skip the snack bar and just get a healthy juice instead, right? But you gotta get some protein, eh? Let’s add some peanut butter in there. Ooh, and just a little bit of chocolate. OK, a crapload of chocolate. Now just put it in a cup bigger than my head and I’ll be all set to go. What a great, healthy snack. I wonder why my pants just ripped.

Estimated Carbs: 180 g

4. Potato Pierogies

Photo: Pittsburgh MetBlog Pics

OK, fine, maybe we Americans didn’t upgrade Italian pasta the best. You gotta hand it to the Poles. Or the Ukrainians. Or the Jews. A lot of people take credit for the humble pierogi, but whoever really invented it truly deserves some praise. Take a pasta-like substance, stuff it with mashed potatoes and fry it up. Now that is some hot carb-in-carb action.

Estimatd Carbs: 200 g

3. Bronze Medal: Bloomin’ Onion

Photo: JustJOOOOlie

Everyone knows that breading and deep-frying foods is the very best thing you can do to them. But the problem is, it’s so hard to get enough breading on things. I mean, you bread a chicken cutlet and it’s still like 90 percent chicken. I wanna turn every food into fried bread, goddamit! Well the genius folks at Outback Steakhouse didn’t let that get in the way. The took an onion and breaded every last little crevice of it. Mmm…fried loaf of bread with onion-y taste. Brilliant.

Estimated Carbs: 240 g

2. Silver Medal: Sweet Corn Tamale Cakes

Photo: Cheesecake Factory

Everyone loves Mexican food, and everyone also loves cake. So why not just combine the two? Only The Cheesecake Factory would have the balls to do this. Their specialty menu item bears very little resemblance to traditional Mexican tamales, and might be more accurately described as “sugar-flour-corn pie” topped with “southwestern sauce” (read: sugary mayo). Weighing in at one of the carb-iest meals around, this dessert-for-dinner dish takes the torta.

Estimated Carbs: 300 g

1. Gold Medal: Deep Fried Coke

Photo: WRALFlickr1

Oh, Texas State Fair, something told me you were gonna come through on this one. Only you could take the sugariest substance on earth –coke– and do what? Take the water out of it and fry that hotness! To make fried coke, a concoction of Coca-Cola fountain syrup and gooey batter is deep fried, blotted with a paper towel (kidding!), topped with whip cream and cherries, and doused in even more Coca-Cola syrup. Beijing, here we come.

Estimated Carbs: Too damn many.