The Great Lake Placid PEC Special

Every year around this time, my friends and I take a pilgrimage to the frozen wonders of  Lake Placid, NY (Canada), home of the storied Miracle on Ice and giant alligators.  Generally, we have the trip down to a science: get way too drunk Friday night, snowboard Whiteface with a debilitating hangover, shot-skis at the lodge, lose our voices singing karaoke, wake up power hour, vodka red bulls at Zig-Zags. Rinse, repeat. Or in my case ice bath (I fall down the mountain a lot.) This year, we didn't only do all of the above activities. We were lucky enough to witness our best friend, Mike, propose at the top of a fucking mountain before our first run.  Congrats and thank you for setting the bar way high on proposals. In all seriousness, it was such an honor being there this weekend.  For the folks at home, this engagement was a 10/10.  

But we're not here to rate engagements, we're here to rate pork rolls, and friends, I had a lot of them this weekend.  When you're holding in a secret as big as the one I just told you about, you have no choice but to stuff your face with food.  In my case, I secretly judged every single pork roll, egg and cheese I ate throughout the weekend.  Here are the results, power ranked. Incredibly, the longer the weekend went, the worse it got. 


1. Brian & Mike

The first PEC of the weekend was really the only true one.  You may say just by showing up with all the ingredients they won by default.  This sandwich erased any signs of whiskey-induced "dehydration" I had that morning and what fueled me tearing up all the green slopes Whiteface had to offer.  Working as a team definitely had its advantages for them, like Brian melting the cheese in between the slices of pork roll.  With a liability like Mike handling the eggs, the score almost slipped to 2nd place.  I'll chalk up the eggs to pre-proposal jitters, I still ate the thing in 2.3 seconds.  

2. Matt & Chrissy

Sometime around 2am* night 2, I caught a whiff of the unmistakable smell of pork roll on the grill.  Did it concern me that the smoke alarm was about to go off? A little.  But what I found was a husband and wife assembly line of late night snacks that would give us the energy we needed to stay up all night.   No eggs due to Matt almost smoking us out of the house and into minus 10-degrees but really we didn't need them.  These were power fuel needed to hit the Celine Dion notes going down in the next room.  

*I checked the timestamp on when I took this picture and it was actually 11:18pm. HA.

300. El Jefe Eats

No picture exists of the monstrosity of a breakfast sandwich I made Sunday morning before everyone woke up.  All I know is that if I didn't eat something, anything within 10 minutes of me waking up, I would have surely not made it out of Lake Placid alive, let alone participate in our Sunday morning power hour.  The cuts of pork roll were too thick, they were likely undercooked.  Forget eggs, couldn't find the pan.  Bread toasted almost burnt.  And unmelted, cold cheese.  An absolutely embarrassing performance under duress that I'm glad only I witnessed.  Don't worry, I will be ready next time when the gang spends an entire week in OBX.