Chapter 7: Sam v. Food


After several frantic days seeing the sights of Vancouver, and managing to keep themselves out of trouble while Spencer, Carly, and Gibby continued working at Harry Joyner's improvised studio, Sam and Freddie were spending a lazy morning at the Tom Hilton's donut shop a block from their hotel. In addition to liter-sized cups of nuclear-strength coffee, which to Freddie's relief were no longer on Sam's menu, the donut chain offered the fastest free wi-fi connection in the downtown area. Freddie had brought his laptop to the restaurant, and was using the service to add some pictures from Vancouver to the iCarly website, while Sam connected her pearPhone to the same signal.

The last time they were in the store, two days previously, they had met the American consul general, who had helped Freddie get Sam back to their hotel safely when she had suffered a caffeine-sugar crash after a snack of Tom Hilton's coffee and donuts. The diplomat's daughter was a big fan of their webshow, and Freddie's e-mail to the consul thanking him for his help led to them meeting the girl to pose for pictures and autographs. The girl's mother turned out to be from Brazil, and the daughter spoke Portuguese fluently. Freddie had shot a brief spot with the girl translating his and Sam's message to Brazilian viewers, and the iCarly site now featured its first-ever clip directly targeted to a foreign audience. Carly had been really upset to miss out on all the excitement but Camila, the diplomat's daughter, told them that in Brazil the fans were much more interested in the whole 'Seddie' part of the show – they wouldn't be too upset that Carly was absent from the clip.

Right before they left for Vancouver, Sam, Freddie, and Carly had been thrilled to see "Brazil Loves iCarly" trend on Twitter. Indeed, the site's logs showed that tens of thousands of Brazilians watched the show, even without any translation. Freddie reviewed the thousands of tweets that came in the span of a few hours, but the messages were entirely in Portuguese, save for the trending phrase in English. Camila had read the tweets for him, and had just e-mailed him a summary of what she found. Freddie already regretted the spot he had just uploaded.

"Sam, I still can't believe you sent a tweet thanking our 'incredible Brazilian fans' without knowing what they wrote," Freddie said.

"They like our show. The whole world loves iCarly."

"Yeah, but David's daughter just sent me some translations. Those tweets were another fanwar, Sam! They were all talking about what happened at the prom. They're either mad at me for going out with you, or they want to beat you up for going out with me. And you told them they were incredible! Now we've got a fanwar trending, it looks like we support it, and all of this when we just got people to lay off the Creddie and Seddie and just enjoy the show!" He stared at Sam, who seemed disturbingly unbothered by the whole mess.

"Meh," Sam replied, and shoved her empty medium red Tom's cup toward Freddie. "Get me another coffee."

"No. I see you haven't learned your lesson about the coffee in this place, yet. You already got sick once. And there's no one here to help me carry you back to the hotel today."

Sam had already buried her nose back into her phone when she leapt out of her seat and shook Freddie's arm vigorously. "Freddie! He's here! Allen Brickton is in Vancouver today!"

"Allen Brickton? Guy v. Grub?"

Yes, Guy versus Grub. The show had become Sam's favorite over the last four months, since Freddie discovered it ran for five straight hours every Saturday morning on The Kitchen Channel. Brickton made his name in the food business as the Cheesesteak King of South Philadelphia. This led to a reality show in which his claim to fame was travelling the country to spots that served the largest portions of comfort food and essentially stuffing his face on camera. The first time Freddie saw the show, he sat in awe. He never thought anyone would create a television show with Sam Puckett in mind. He told Sam about the show, and her Saturday morning marathons of Girly Cow immediately became a thing of the past. Sam immediately became a devotee of his segments in barbecue places, and often wished he would visit a restaurant in Seattle. The first time she saw it she leaned closer to the TV and told Freddie in a reverential whisper, "I think I know what I want to be when I grow up." Brickton sealed the deal when he closed one segment by saying, "there is no dish you can't make better by adding a little bit of bacon."

"Yes!" Sam answered Freddie. "It's on his Twitter! He's going to shoot today, at a barbecue place called 'The Big Pig,' starting at one o'clock." Her face was flushed with excitement as she jumped up and down beside the table. "Barbecue AND Brickton! This is the happiest day of my life!"

There was no question of whether or not he was going to take her – they both knew that in matters of food, arguing with Sam was useless. Freddie immediately looked up the restaurant's location. "Sam, it's out in the suburbs, in a place called New Westminster." A few more clicks. "We can take something called the Skytrain to go out there, but we need to get moving now to make it by one o'clock."

Freddie learned that it was even harder to get an excited Sam someplace efficiently than a tired Sam. She practically dragged him out of the donut shop toward a train station despite having no idea of where a train station was. Nevertheless, fifteen minutes later, Freddie's laptop was safely locked away in his room, and he had them on the Expo Line headed for the eastern suburbs. By 12:30, they were exiting the New Westminster Skytrain station.

"So where is the place?" Sam asked.

"I don't know yet. I'm pulling up the address on the phone again. I don't even know if it's close enough to walk."

"Give me that, Freddison. I'll G.P.S. the proper junction."

Fortunately for them, it was indeed within walking distance, and ten minutes later they found themselves crossing the parking lot of The Big Pig. It was a true suburban restaurant, with a large parking lot, and a huge seating area that could accommodate hundreds. A large portion of the far corner of the lot contained a collection of vehicles with the Guy v. Grub logo prominently on the side. When Sam saw the trucks she looked like a kid at Christmas, taking Freddie's hand and dragging him inside.

They walked in the front door, going to the hostess' counter. While waiting for her attention, Freddie looked around the restaurant. The dining room stretched for hundreds of feet, and was crammed with large tables. The walls were covered with a mix of Southern and Western-themed memorabilia, including license plates from numerous states and Canadian provinces. And it was loud, even though the place was just a little more than half-full. But what grabbed his attention the most was the smell. Off in the corner of the restaurant, there was a large black smoker, preparing the cuts of meat to be barbecued. The aroma of the meat filled the restaurant completely, together with a hint of the barbecue sauce and spices used in the preparation. Freddie turned to say something to Sam, but she ignored him and looked straight ahead with her eyes opened wide, hypnotized by the odor and wearing a tiny smile on her face.

"Table for two, sir?" said the hostess, and Freddie nodded. She led them to an empty booth about halfway back in the restaurant, where they both took seats. It afforded a good view of a large table that the staff was setting up, and around which the television crew was setting up its cameras.

"Are they about to film?" Freddie asked the hostess before she turned to leave.

"Not yet," she replied. "Mr. Brickton is still back in the kitchen, filming our manager and the cooks. He's supposed to be coming out here in less than twenty minutes."

"So what do you think, Sam?" Freddie asked after the hostess left.

"I want to bathe in this barbecue sauce," she replied, opening one of the bottles on the table and smearing the sauce on her finger. Freddie followed suit, not noticing that it was the bottle marked "General Alarm." It was easily the hottest thing Freddie had ever tasted, and it set his entire mouth on fire (this was much worse than the meal in Chinatown he couldn't even touch). Their waitress had not even brought out glasses of water yet, and Freddie struggled to keep his eyes from watering and his nose from running as he tried to listen to what Sam was saying.

"There's a place just like this in J'Maw-Maw's town. She took Melanie and me there a few times when we spent a summer with her."

"Doesn't she live in Georgia?"

"Yep. In Willacoochie. It's in the middle of nowhere, but I love it. Maybe it's a little too quiet, but it means they don't interrupt you while you eat all that local food."

"Which I'm sure you did…"

"Nub!" Sam growled, kicking Freddie in the shin. "So … maybe I did. J'Maw-Maw loves to cook. Ham, pork chops, fried chicken, bacon, fried potatoes."

"Those are all your favorite foods, too. I bet Georgia is where you learned to love them."

Sam smiled back at Freddie. This was one of the things that had become different between them once they started dating. Extended silence always made them uncomfortable, and Sam always broke the silence with some sort of a sarcastic remark. But now, they could just sit and smile at each other. Freddie reached out and took Sam's hand in his own, and she immediately gave it a little squeeze. Then she stood up.

"I have to go to the bathroom. I'll be back." Sam turned and headed for the rest rooms, which were at the very back of the restaurant. As Freddie opened the menu and began to look through the pages detailing the various ways the restaurant barbecued meat, he began to notice the country music playing over the speakers. He was never a fan of country music, preferring Top 40 pop songs, but he agreed that country fit the theme of the restaurant. He began to pay attention to the lyrics of the songs, and noticed how they invoked rural Appalachia:

Shake it for the birds, shake it for the bees
Shake it for the catfish swimmin' down deep in the creek
For the crickets and the critters and the squirrels
Shake it to the moon, shake it for me girl

If I'm gonna hit a traffic jam,
Well it better be a tractor man
So sick and tired of this interstate system
I need a curve a windy twistin'
Dusty path to nowhere

A third song came on, but he had a harder time hearing it over the noise the technicians made as they started to set up the lighting at Allen Brickton's table. Still, he could tell this song was by a female singer and he thought he made out the lyrics "the connected generation to a plasma screen." Well that's a far cry from squirrels, critters, and dirt paths, Freddie thought to himself. Nice voice, though, his mind continued, when the sight of three girls his age sitting at the table next to him caught his eye. Freddie had never been the sort to chase a lot of girls, and being with Sam made him even less inclined, but he had to admit that these three women were very attractive, one blonde, one brunette, and one redhead. He didn't mean to stare, and cursed to himself when he made direct eye contact with the redhead, who visibly blushed.

Just then he noticed Sam had emerged from the rest room and was headed for their booth, and he quietly began to panic. He knew that the flip side of Sam's insecurities was her excessive jealousy, and his heart beat faster when he saw that the redhead was not taking her eyes off him. As Sam got back into the booth and picked up a menu, the redhead pulled her friends closer and began to whisper into their ears, never taking her eyes off Freddie. Finally, the three girls stood up and walked over to them. Despite his having drunk a whole glass of water while Sam was away, Freddie's mouth turned dry as the girls approached.

"Oh my God! It is—you're Freddie and Sam, from iCarly!"

Freddie turned toward the three girls and smiled, hoping they were viewers who merely recognized them, and not girls who wanted to flirt. He kept looking at Sam out of the corner of his eye, and he saw the scowl on her face. She suspected they weren't exactly there to flirt with her.

"That's us," he said to the girls. "So do you watch the show?"

"Since it first came on!" the redhead said. "I'm Jacquie, by the way. This is Lori, she she's Leah," she continued, gesturing to her brunette and blonde friends. "I didn't know you were in Vancouver? Is Carly here?"

"She's in Vancouver, but she's not with us. She and Gibby are with Spencer, because he's here to work on a sculpture. We're here to see Guy v. Grub, like everyone else. Sam loves the show." He gestured to Sam, who remained silent through the entire exchange.

"You know, we watched you at your prom, and the two of you look so adorable together. We weren't really into the Seddie and Creddie stuff like some of our friends were, but once we saw you were dating, we were hooked. Congratulations!"

"Well, thanks very much." Freddie felt a little tongue-tied at hearing that. He and Sam had endured their friends' reaction to their becoming a couple, but this was his first real encounter with a fan who had watched them reconcile on a computer screen. He glanced over at Sam and gripped her hand more tightly, and he noticed that she looked like she was seconds away from pouncing on the three girls.

"Hi, Sam!" the brunette said, not appreciating how deeply Sam was annoyed by the attention they were paying to Freddie.

"Yeah, it was good to meet you. We're going to eat now," she replied, looking down at her menu.

"So are you guys on the show today?" asked the redhead, missing Sam's message. "Allen Brickton always has celebrities on the show to do the eating challenges with him."

That brought out the Sam he knew and loved and she threw her menu to the table, leaning toward the girls who looked just the tiniest bit scared. Excited Sam had that effect on people. "The eating challenge! I forgot about that! Where is he? We can be on it!" Sam yelled at the girls.

Freddie reflexively put his hand on Sam's, but his attention turned to the blonde girl, who he saw running into the part of the restaurant where the cameras were being installed. She talked to a few people until she found someone apparently in charge, and she pointed excitedly at where he and Sam were sitting. She started back in their direction, with the producer in tow.

The middle-aged producer came toward Freddie and extended his hand. "Hi, I'm Mike Sharpton. I direct and produce Guy v. Grub. Your friend here says the two of you do a webshow. So you have experience in front of a camera?"

"She does," said Freddie, gesturing at Sam. "She co-hosts the show. I'm the technical producer. Sam loves the show, and wanted to come to see it made. She also loves a good barbecue."

"That's really interesting. Would the two of you be interested in being on the show? Come on over to the other side where we can talk and I can show you what we've set up."

Freddie was about to get up when he felt a sharp tug on his right arm. He looked across the table at Sam, whose eyes were still shooting knives at him.

"What's wrong, Princess?"

"What was that all about?"

"An eating contest where you can have all the meat you want."

"No, I come back to find those three girls all over like you're on the menu."

"Sam, they noticed the two of us, not just me. Isn't it kind of neat that we come to another country and people recognize us because they watch our show? And that they saw prom and think we're a cute couple? I like it that they recognized us."

"Benson, I don't do cute. And if you think Mama's not enough woman for you, you might not be too cute either when I'm done. Let's go."

Freddie still felt the tension in Sam's hand as she started to pull him in the direction of the crew's lights. They arrived at the large round table that the stage crew had set up, and noticed that it had four places.

"Why four places?" Freddie asked Sharpton.

"The Big Pig's special is for two teams of two. Each side gets a plate with five kinds of meat, two large baked potatoes, and half a kilo of creamy cole slaw. Whoever eats more in an hour wins."

"So I have to eat too?" Suddenly he felt a little less confident. Not that he didn't like to eat, but if he had any part in Sam losing this contest he might not make it back to the hotel in one piece.

"Well, you'll get more of it down if both of you eat."

"What kinds of meat will there be?" Sam interrupted.

"Beef brisket, pulled pork, pulled chicken, a full slab of ribs, and, the pièce de résistance, a five-pound ham."

Sam bounced up and down in her Converse. "Benson, if you get in the way of me enjoying this little platter from heaven, I'm unretiring the butter sock. Got it?"

"Yeah," Freddie said sourly. Just as he thought. He dreaded what his mother would think when she saw this later on. He dreaded how he would feel an hour into the future even more. He then looked up and saw a huge Pacific Islander in front of him. The man was close to seven feet tall, and every dimension in his body was huge.

The producer stepped into Freddie's view and said, "Freddie, this is Maile Tautalailagi. He'll be Mr. Brickton's teammate today."

He had to eat more than him? This was insane! "How are you?" Freddie asked, shaking the giant's hand.

"I hear you're from Seattle. I was a lineman with the Cobras for four years. Now I'm playing football here, for the British Columbia Pumas."

Freddie whipped out his phone as Sam continued talking to Maile, and sent Spencer a text, hoping he'd be looking at his phone.

Spence, did u meet a Maile Tautalailagi at Cobra tryout?

A response came in less than a minute.

Samoan dude! Guy is huuuge! Can't block for chizz but never saw anybody eat so much. Sam is nothing next to him!

We've been set up, Freddie realized.

Sam, meanwhile, had finished talking to their gargantuan opponent and was getting settled in. She had five bottles of barbecue sauce positioned around her plate, and was toying with … well, caressing, really … a large serving fork that was part of the table setting. Her eyes lit up and she leapt from the chair to run over to another burly man that Freddie recognized as Allen Brickton.

"Hi, Allen Brickton," the man said, turning from Sam and grabbing Freddie's hand. "So you have a show of your own?"

"Yes, we do it live every week on the internet down in Seattle. It's called iCarly."

"I'm going to be in Seattle in two weeks."

"Really? We'd love to have you on the show to talk about Guy v. Grub. Maybe you could do a cooking demonstration."

"I'd love that!" Brickton replied. "You already met Mike Sharpton? Tell him about Seattle, and he'll do all the arrangements. So you're the barbecue fan?"

"No, that would be Sam, my girlfriend." He really did love saying that word. "Her family is originally from southern Georgia, so she was raised on barbecue."

Brickton looked over at Sam and grinned. "She's your team's big eater?" He elbowed the Samoan, and gestured at Sam. He swore he heard the larger man reply this little blonde's gonna beat us?

"I wouldn't underestimate the 'little blonde,'" Freddie said. "She's been known to make grown men cry." His eyes were steely but his opponents continued to look amused. Now Freddie was mad. He wasn't just going to enjoy watching Sam beat these guys. He was looking forward to helping them.

With the four of them seated, the servers began to bring out huge piles of food, each team needing two platters to hold all its meat, plus other plates for the potatoes and coleslaw. As the plates landed on the table, Freddie looked across at Brickton mugging for the cameras and yelling trash talk to the jeering crowd. He then looked at Sam and at Tautalailagi. They both looked determined. He saw the same gleam that Sam had in her eyes when sitting down to a plate of bacon in Carly's apartment.

As the restaurant's owner raised a whistle to his mouth, Freddie reflexively counted to himself, in 5, 4, 3, 2, …

Game on.

Freddie expected Sam to grab the ham when the whistle blew, but she went for the pulled chicken and pork instead, grabbing handfuls of each from the platter and putting them in her mouth. It seemed disgusting, but he noticed that the other side was foregoing utensils as well. Freddie figured that there were no points for neatness or table manners, so he grabbed the rack of ribs and began tearing. This was actually a treat. He never got to eat things like barbecue around his mother, and he could never ignore decorum when she was present. He also had missed breakfast that morning, and did not realize how hungry he was until he began to eat.

Fifteen minutes into the competition, he was surprised to see that the two sides were even. Freddie had reduced the slab of ribs to a pile of bones, and Sam had finished off the chicken and pork and turned to the ham. Freddie grabbed the beef brisket, also pre-sliced so he could eat with his hands. He also took the plate of cole slaw, figuring that the moisture would offset the beef's dryness and keep the food going down his throat. The beef was indeed bulkier than the ribs, but by the forty-minute mark, all he and Sam had left were their potatoes and the remainder of Sam's ham.

Sam glanced at the empty plates in front of Freddie, and said through her full mouth, "Where did you learn to put away food like that, nub?"

Between bites Freddie replied, "Same time the voice changed! Come on, I'm a teenage boy." He never ate like this in front of Sam, not for lack of an appetite, but because she usually helped herself to anything he was eating. For once, they were eating as a team, not fighting over their food.

And with that thought, another first took place. Sam cut a large piece of ham from her plate, and put it onto his. "We have to get this thing finished. They're almost done." And it was true. Brickton and the football player were almost finished, and were down to one pile of meat, the potatoes and cole slaw gone.

As the clock passed 50 minutes, Freddie began to despair. Despite having Sam Puckett on his team, he couldn't keep up with two guys who essentially ate for a living. The two of them were going to finish first. His own stomach felt like it was about to burst, and he was at the point where he'd be content never to see ham again in his life. But he noticed unusual expressions creep over Brickton's and Tautalailagi's faces, and their eyelids began to droop. It became more pronounced over Freddie's next few bites, and the two of them suddenly dropped back in their seats, fast asleep, forks still in their hands.

"Hey, they're in a food coma!" one of the spectators shouted. And it seemed they'd be asleep for a while. The opportunity to come from behind to win gave Freddie and Sam a second wind, and they finished off the ham just as the bell rang to indicate that the 60 minutes were up.

Sam leapt from her chair, her fists raised in victory. As Freddie stood up much more slowly, stiffly and with a bit of pain in his midsection, Sam pulled a small black marker from her back pocket, leaned over, and began to draw an … image … on Brickton's forehead. The very same thing that she put on Gibby's forehead at the lock-in a year previously.

"Stop tape! Stop! Stop!" screamed the producer, waving his arms before the cameras. He turned to Sam and glared. "Now we can't use this tape at all! Asleep with THAT on his forehead? This won't even be aired! Why did you do that?"

"Because it's funny," Sam smiled, aiming her phone and snapping Brickton's picture.

Freddie sighed, and tried to nudge Sam away from the table. The restaurant's owner came over to them with a dejected expression, practically throwing caps and t-shirts with I WON THE BIG PIG CHALLENGE emblazoned across the front at them and storming away.

Sam seemed oblivious to it all, looking thoroughly pleased with herself. They walked to the front door, using the commotion around the sleeping men as cover to slip out the door. They walked down the street in silence, going to the Skytrain station and getting a train headed back downtown.

Once they were seated on the train, Freddie turned to Sam and asked, "What did you do to them, Puckett?"

With a big grin, Sam reached into her purse and pulled out tiny glass bottle. "This was supposed to go into the guacamole at the lock-in until you guessed what I was doing. I left it in my purse … figured it would eventually come in handy. And I would say it proved very handy today."

"Sam, you ruined their show, and we only won because we cheated!"

"Fine, you want to go back there, give back their silly t-shirts, and pay the $200 that our meal cost?"

Freddie sighed. "Never mind." Mama won again. Freddie finally noticed something shining in Sam's left hand, and realized it was the giant serving fork from the restaurant. "And what is that?" he asked while pointing at it.

"It's an incredibly gigantic fork. Now I can eat ham with it and always think back to this moment."

"On top of everything else, you stole their fork? Why, Sam?"

"Because I liked it and I didn't have one, okay?"

Freddie leaned back and exhaled. He tried not to think about all the things that Sam had done in the last hour. They were lucky not to be in trouble, and maybe they still would be—everyone in that restaurant knew they were from iCarly. As he fumed, he felt Sam lean against him and lay her head on his shoulder. He put his arm around her and sighed.

"He was going to come onto iCarly, too. He could have been one of our biggest guest stars." Sam chuckled and moved against him more tightly. Freddie laughed back at her. "You're gonna get me put in jail one of these days, you know."

"I'm just showing you how to enjoy life, dork."

"I should be embarrassed as anything today, but yeah, I had a good time. I don't think I ever saw as much joy on your face as when you were shoveling that meat in your mouth."

"Joy is my middle name."

"Okay, that has to be worse than any joke I've ever told you…" He looked over and saw that Sam was still smiling. "I love you, you know that?"

"I sometimes get that idea … and I love you too."

Freddie kissed Sam's forehead, and they snuggled more deeply into their seat as they watched the suburbs pass by.

"Hey nub?"

"Hmmm?"

"Where are we going for dinner?"