Wednesday, November 2, 2016

Mmm. Donut.

I used to think donuts were the perfect food. Donuts never let me down. Every single donut was a triumph. Even old donuts were fine. Mom used to pick up powdered donuts in a box at the store whenever a rare run of good behavior on my part coincided with her own cravings. I still remember how the powdered sugar felt cool on the lips. Later, in high school, a bunch of us used to make a donut run in Sue Martin's Barracuda when we were skipping out of the Literary Magazine period. (The literary magazine staff was assumed to be mature, and lightly supervised.) I had gone over to jelly donuts. Still basically a powdered sugar donut, with a bonus.

Moved on to Glazed in college, when I'd pick up a single donut at Mr. Donut for my lunch, because it was cheap and satisfying and it had not yet occurred to me that good nutrition might ever come in handy or not involve donuts. It took years to shift to a different diet, but eventually I was able to break the donut habit with a smooth transition to pizza and beer. By the time I got my postal job, I wasn't buying donuts anymore at all.

No, I ate donuts only when they were free. And that happened all the time. Someone was always retiring, or leaving the station or coming into the station, or having a birthday, or winning the baseball pool; or we employees had somehow inadvertently done something arbitrarily laudable that the boss rewarded with donuts. Donuts were postal currency.

Not only that, but every eight weeks I gave blood at the Red Cross on Tuesdays, because that was the day they served Krispy Kremes. Until the day they didn't. Someone in the Red Cross hierarchy decided that Krispy Kremes were likely to provoke a flu epidemic, which might be a legally actionable event, because flu sufferers were known to want to give blood and then paw through all the identical donuts looking for the right one. Tongs, people! Have the grizzled old volunteer dude shuffle over with a box of donuts and tongs! No. Donuts were gone. I developed blood donation difficulties soon after.

So now it has been literally years since I've had a donut, even though I really, really like donuts, and there's a spectacular donut shop around the corner. I try not to eat wheat, and somewhere under the sugar and grease there's wheat, probably.

Until today, when our lovely neighbor Kate came by with a buttermilk donut for each of us. Ohhhhhhh. Donut. "I love you," I said to my donut. "I'll never leave you," my donut said to me. Now we are one. Now I use the pronoun "we."

We're thinking about going for a walk later today, my donut and I. We're not sure. But we might.

We might take a nap.

29 comments:

  1. The thing I miss the most about living in the States -- powdered sugar ring donuts!

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  2. Oooh. My favorite---Krispy Kreme glazed with chocolate icing. There is a Krispy Kreme store/bakery on a road I drive on often; I have to look the other way (most of the time) when I drive by.

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    1. We all caught that "most of the time," Knittergran.

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  3. Now craving an apple fritter. Do you classify that as a genuine donut? Kim in PA

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    1. Why yes it do. Donut don't need no hole. That what make donut different from you and me.

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  4. We used to have a donut on an occasional but regular basis, but now that we never have them, I've discovered I don't really like them. Not sure whether to be happy or sad about that.

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    1. Yeah, they're kind of a gut bomb. I can make do without easily enough, now, but once every few years, they're mighty nice going down.

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  5. What I don't understand is the wheat thing. I've never had any problems until lately and when I abstain I do better... Just thinkin' about that... btw... I do so love donuts!

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    1. Very briefly: I don't notice a problem with wheat. But when I tried to go off it for a month it turned into three years. I dropped weight right away and only because for the first time in my life my appetite was under control: I didn't just keep eating because food was there. I didn't need to go for the crackers and cheese in the afternoon. I didn't look at an empty dinner plate and immediately want to fill it up again. Apparently wheat is a major appetite trigger, and I'd never gone a day in my life without it. Thing two: my heart rate went from a lifetime average 88 to about 76. Also, I found I don't miss the wheat at all. So it's easy to stay on this, because I'm eating as much as I want. I just want less! (I'm not a fiend about it though. If someone wants to serve me wheat for dinner, I'm not going to say "Eww, I can't." I don't want to be that person.)

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    2. Murr, did you cut wheat out altogether or just cut down drastically? And when you eat it now, does it increase your appetite right away or does it take a steady diet of it to do that? (Maybe as a side income stream, you could answer questions like this for a fee)

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    3. I cut it out altogether, at first. It took a little practice and a lot of ingredient-reading but then then it was easy; just ate (and enjoyed) a lot more vegetables. So yeah, now when I have some wheat for dinner, I *think* I notice that I'm more peckish the next day, but I'm not sure...however I definitely can tell my heart rate goes up again. I lie down to sleep and hear my pulse rate and think: what happened here? and then remember what I'd eaten.

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    4. I didn't know that about wheat. I'm not saying that no-one has told me that fact, just that I probably couldn't hear them over all the noise of my wheaty snack chomping.

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    5. Mmm. Wheaty snack chomping. (Those rice-based crackers are fabulous, BTW)

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    6. Thanks, Murr. Interesting about the heart rate. Sounds like you're pretty sensitive to wheat all around.

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    7. Actually, I suspect I'm not. I think this is more of a Wheat Thing than a Murr Thing. There are those who believe we weren't designed to digest grains in general and wheat in particular--I will only report my own observations, however. (People who go off wheat usually drop pounds in a hurry.)

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  6. Perhaps not being American accounts for my not liking donuts?

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    1. What if there were a vegemite donut?

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    2. Those are two concepts that do NOT go together.

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    3. I wouldn't, nevertheless, put it past our local Voodoo Donuts.

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  7. I don't like them either. We got a Krispy Kreme franchise (which went broke and disappeared). Himself bought one, has a bite, and dropped it in the nearest bin. I passed.
    Cheese on the other hand...

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    1. Yeah, I'm all about the cheese. I crave savory over sweet now. But a donut every three years won't kill me.

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  8. You got donuts for blood?!? All I ever got was a little juice and a couple of stale packaged cookies. I bleed cheap, I guess.

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    1. I used to, before Krispy Kremes. Now I don't at all!

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  9. A walk sounds like a fabulous idea. Right after your nap. Or before it. During is not such a great idea. I love donuts myself and have had far too many in the past three years. I gave them up, but recently gave in to temptation and purchased a couple of Krispy Kremes, because we have those out here now. One was very nice, but the other was filled with a white substance known as 'creme' but it felt like I was eating a spoonful of face cream, so I scooped it out and threw that away. ate the rest of the donut though. But now I'm back on the diet, the one where I'm supposed to be losing thirty pounds, but have in actual fact put on two :(

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    1. Don't lose thirty pounds! What if they're just the ones you needed most?

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    2. The rest of the pounds will just have to make do. I can't get into my jeans dammit! and I refuse to go up another size, having done that several times already.

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  10. I'm with your doughnut philosophy, love them, but never buy them myself. Only eat those that show up at work.

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    1. And that was easy for me to do, since there were ALWAYS donuts at work!

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