|
Riffing on Elvis
Food Fit for a King
[17 August 2006]
|
In an experiment to eat like Elvis Presley for a day, Mhatre finds it takes enormous... capacity... to emulate the King.
|
by Amol Mhatre
I've had peanut-butter and banana sandwiches before. I eat them quite regularly. But when I tackled Elvis Presley's favorite sandwich, I had to follow his particular recipe: mashed-up banana and peanut-butter, spread between white bread and deep fried in lots of butter. The first one went down easy. It was warm, soft, and comforting. I washed it down with a glass of milk, because as Elvis was fond of saying, "Milk makes ya sexy." The second sandwich tasted just as good as the first, but I started to feel a thick and gooey sensation in my stomach. I was about half-way through sandwich number three when the first one really made itself felt. It was as if I had swallowed concrete. Until then, the sandwiches had gone down so easy, so salty and sweet. I drank a bit more milk to help churn the mess in my belly and gave the rest of number three to my dog. Elvis, on the other hand, was able to consume 10-14 of these gut-bombs in one sitting. Regularly.
Indeed, Elvis lived his life in excess. His home, Graceland, is a study in bright colors and gold and silver accents. His collection of Cadillacs was notorious, as was his penchant for swallowing horse-killing amounts of pills. He would buy houses, jewelry, and cars at the drop of a hat for himself as well as his friends and family. His overindulgence has become part of his legend and myth. One can't examine Elvis without taking into account the compulsive, omni-consumer that he became. As I have neither the capital nor the inclination to explore any of his other vices, I chose to study Elvis' love of food through controlled, self-experimentation. My intent: to discover what it would be like to eat like Elvis Presley for one day.
Lunch was next, and I chose to have Elvis's favorite food: meatloaf. Supposedly, he used to go for weeks eating nothing but meatloaf. I procured a football shaped lump of the stuff from my local supermarket and mashed some red potatoes with plenty of salt, butter, and milk as the traditional side dish. Given my experience with the peanut-butter and banana sandwiches, I wasn't sure I could stomach more food. To my surprise, the smell of the butter and potatoes, and the sweet meaty fragrance of the meatloaf brought back my appetite. I began to realize that hunger had nothing to do with my desire to eat. This kind of eating was all about pleasure.
Elvis, and I, could have survived on half (in Elvis's case one fifteenth) of the amount of food we took in. But while shoveling mouthful after mouthful of all that warm, beefy, starchy goodness down my throat, I realized that I was enjoying myself. It was cold and gray outside, and I was inside eating hot meatloaf with fresh mashed potatoes. Damn if I didn't love it. Afterwards, I settled down to read for a while, dozed off, and woke up an hour later, on the couch, book in hand, and fork in lap. I'm not sure how Elvis managed to do anything after eating more than twice than the amount I did, but perhaps that is one reason why he has fan-clubs that still meet more than 20 years after his death and I will never garner such attention.
Last but not least was the hamburger for dinner. Is there any other food more American than the hamburger? It is the great democratic food. Sure, there are fancy $40 hamburgers now, made with truffles and foie gras, but even the least fortunate among us can usually afford a hamburger, albeit of more modest makings. In fact, some would say that the cheaper the burger the better. Elvis ate them almost daily, stopping on the road to surprise locals at burger joints along the highway. He used to order his burgers extra well-done; in fact he would send his burger back two or three times in order to get the just right amount of charred meat flavor.
I tried such a well cooked burger at the counter of Bonnie's Grill on a sunny day in Brooklyn and it was much better than I could have imagined. The chewy, yet sturdy Kaiser roll was perfect for holding together the patty, lettuce, tomato, onion, ketchup, and mustard masterpiece in between. In order to take a proper bite, meant getting all the flavors in one mouthful, I had to bury my face in the burger so completely that my vision was obscured. Eating a burger is a continuous act. It is quite difficult to stop eating, for fear of the meal falling apart in your hands. So, an eater must charge through the entire sandwich, pausing only to wipe condiments off his face. Perhaps this was why Elvis loved a burger: no need to pause and contemplate. It is said he loved burgers because they didn't have bones in them, which he saw as an annoying obstacle to his meat-eating speed. After I was finished with my well-done, well accessorized burger, I sat at the diner counter, sipping a beer, picking at cole-slaw, and watching sports on the television. I felt so very American, and not unconnectedly, so very bloated.
Every day at Graceland, Elvis's personal chef Alvena Roy was instructed to make a fresh batch of banana pudding. Banana pudding is essentially plain vanilla pudding layered with vanilla wafers and cut-up bananas. I made a batch of the stuff after I came home from the burger joint and let it sit in the fridge for a while, as you're supposed to. Even though I was couldn't imagine eating, again, by the time it was perfectly chilled I forced myself to try a small serving. It was fantastic. The wafers and bananas had softened so much under the pudding that it was tough to tell what was in each spoonful of the yellow and white goop. It was tooth-achingly sweet and quite satisfying. Fearing some sort of internal rupture, I put the bowl away after a few bites and lay in bed moaning, gently singing "It's Alright" to my G.I. tract.
Curiously, I woke up in the middle of night feeling very hungry. How was that possible? I debated whether or not I should get up and have some more pudding - just a spoonful or twelve. The king would have done it. He did whatever he wanted, right? But I resisted, and mercifully, fell back to sleep. Tomorrow I would eat lots of vegetables…and maybe a little pudding.
[back to section front page]
|
