Vend for yourselves!

It’s a random brisk Tuesday morning. It’s prime time for the holiday season, full of merriment, joy, and of course glutinous consumption. How better to ring in the holidays and also raise some charitable contributions than a food challenge? Before I write anymore, I blame Ian Cohen. That bastige.

This might be one of the worst decisions I’ve ever made, but as most know me, I don’t typically back down from a challenge. The challenge today? The Vending Machine challenge.

The task is simple: eat one one of each of the items in a vending machine over a 9-hour work day period. This particular vending machine happens to contain 40-items, ranging from savory to sweet, candy to chips, and even a few packs of gum to mix things up.

The curve-ball to this challenge is, I don’t actually get to pick the order that I eat the items. My co-workers do. They pick the item, they pick the time. Random draw – or should I say, no-so-random as they’ve strategically picked items and stacked it against my odds of completing the task at hand. I complete the challenge? The contributions go to our charitable organization. I lose the challenge? I match the contributions and then donate also.

My current mental and hunger state? Mentally, I’m neither-here nor there. I’m ready to take this head on with utmost hesitations. Physically, I’m hungry.

On the plan thus far are: chicken flavor ramen noodles (9:00am), reese peanut butter cups (9:15am), special-k double chocolate protein bar (9:30am), TGIFridays bacon flavor potato skins (9:45am), lifesavers wintergreen mints (10:00am), twix candy bars (10:05am) … and so many other items …

Last point before I begin this epic-ness? Calorie count guess for the day? 8000 calories. No I don’t plan on eating much else in terms of a meal today. Follow me on Twitter (@patrickchaupham) today, as well as my Posterous for the play-by-play. There will be a re-cap video.

Here’s my happy mug at 8:00am in the morning, before I consume a single item: