Donuts of Doom

I have not read this book.








But I can not see how I can not read this book.

Donuts I am going to eat in January. Part 2. Double chocolate.

Tricky.

One of the main motivations for my Year Without Donuts was repeated disappointments at my beloved Dunkin' Donuts.

That being said, my favorite Dunkin' Donut was the Double Chocolate. It's a chocolate-y cake donut with chocolate frosting smeared on top. What's not to like (for a fan of cake donuts, which I am)?

But at my last few visits to Dunkin' Donuts, I found the double chocolates to be wither unavailable or sadly stale.

So there's my dilemma. When I return to a time when it's okay to eat donuts, do I risk another disappointing experience? Do I dare return to Dunkin' Donuts where they no longer bake 'em fresh in the store but truck them in from Tennessee?

Maybe this guy has an answer.
 
Hmm.

Maybe I need to just make my own Double chocolate donuts.

Donuts I am going to eat in January. Part 1. Glazed.

I declared that 2011, for me, would be a Year Without Donuts.

As we near the end of the year, I am allowing myself to think about the donuts I've missed - and will soon visit.

1. Glazed

I am, at heart, a Dunkin' Donuts guy. I like cake donuts. I like the consistency, the variety, the thick and sugary beauty of them.

But there is always glazed. As we learned from The Donut Chef most people like glazed the best.

And as much as I grew up with Dunkin' Donuts as the very definition of donut for me, their glazed are at best passable.

We all know that the glazed donut is now defined by three words: Hot. Fresh. Now.

Let's face it. Krispy Kreme owns the glazed donut. Pure hot, fresh, melt-in-your-mouth goodness.

When I break from my Year Without Donuts fast, the most likely first donut will be one of these. It will be New Year's Day. It will be at my church. There will be donuts spread throughout the friendship court and I will introduce myself to a glazed Krispy Kreme and remind it that we are friends.

You Can't Keep Johnny Down

Delightful winner of a contest to make a video for They Might Be Giants.

Watch until the very end to understand why this is here. It put a lump in my throat.

Chinese Donuts

What flavors are featured at Dunkin' Donuts in China?

If you guessed pork and tuna, you're a winner!

Justifiable Homicide

From the "I think we can all relate" department:

It's a first-degree assault charge for Ednel Diedrich, who allegedly got so mad after his housemate ate a donut he bought that he "lay in wait" in the kitchen the next morning and hit the donut thief in the head with a stool.

The full story here.


Thanks to my pal Fawzy for the link! Fabulous artwork from http://www.edmayart.com/Canvas_Originals.html.

Donut Infused Vodka!!

I'll drink to that!

Jam Donut Cupcakes

Someone bake these for me, please.

Thank you.

Cinco donut Mayo

From Lara Ferroni, an idea that is either disgusting or genius - green chile and chicken donuts.

Donut Ambitions

The April 30, 2011, episode of the great NPR show, Wait Wait Don't Tell Me, features a discussion of donuts and politics about thirty minutes in. It relates to this important news story.

Go listen...

Our New Favorite Cookbook

Have you been looking for gluten-free vegan donuts?

Of course not.

But, on the off chance that you are, have I got the book for you: BabyCakes Covers the Classics: Gluten-Free Vegan Recipes from Donuts to Snickerdoodles.

I'll admit, that donut on the cover sure looks good.

Donut Tweets

Here are some tweets you can currently find if you search for the word donut.

LorraineELLE Lorraine Candy 

Donut day at ELLE. Just collected our monthly allowance from Krispey Kreme

Just_Alison Alison Agosti 

I'm in a bagel shop that features a chocolate bagel. I intend to be their donut Prometheus.

notfortourists Not For Tourists 

Is this the best place on the planet? King Donut @Haydavie in#Seattle has donuts, teriyaki & a laundromat. For real!http://bit.ly/fof7nA

gipedan Dan Gipe 

York sheriff looking for two men in donut theft http://p.ost.im/p/tsjbL

BaileyShereeeee Bailey Hunt 

I love the looks I get when I walk into nutrition holding a Dr. Pepper and a donut. #breakfastforchampions #dontjudgeme

Jason_Sheehan Jason Sheehan 

Entire conf. table full of various donuts at work 2day. Thinking about setting up a tent & just living in donut world until they're all gone

somissurfermom Katherine Hervey 

My son just added something about a donut into the abc song...

LoveStats Annie Pettit 

Does no one know the difference between a cake donut and a yeast donut? Sigh. What is going on in this world.

Donut search

Look at these awesome search terms that brought folks here.



Some of my favorites - woman doughnut, donuts on fire, and the story of holy donuts.


Amen.

donuts

birthday donut

doughnut pizza

coffee and doughnuts

birthday donuts

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banana pudding donut

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woman doughnut

krispy kreme banana pudding doughnut pics

donut cake

happy birthday donuts

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epic donut

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donut pizza

images of krispy kreme banana pudding doughnut

donut decoration

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Happy Birthday donut 20

donut shaped birthday cakes

dunkin donut product images

donuts on fire

doughnut of love

robots and doughnuts

what food group are doughnuts

holey donut dunkin donut

pretty doughnut

neil's donuts

big doughnut cake image

donut haiku

fire and donuts

lamars donuts

short story of a donut

happy b day donut

valentine donuts

pretty donut

bday donut

no donuts picture

circular breakfast waffle

donuts birthday

gambar donat dunkin

donut miracle

donuts omages

the story of holy dounts

donuts#

bithday donut

dunkin donuts cake

birthday donut poem

voodoo donuts gay donut

donut pics

doughnut fire

COFFEE DONUT

a year without donuts

coffee and doughnut

short story about dunkin donuts

Lamar's Donuts

donut paradise dynamo

daugnut press

donut poem birthday

donut birthday cakes

donuty

coffee and a donut

sprinkled doughnut

donut devotions

coffee and donut

short story about donuts

buy one take one dunkin donut

donut sandwich

VooDoo Doughnuts Simpsons doughnuts

donut sushi

jetblue chocolate chip cookies

coffee doughnuts

sprinkled donuts

birthday doughnut image

holy donut company

doughnut food group

happy birthday donnut

the waffle

donut on fire

Holy Cream doghnuts

Noooooooo!

It's like all my nightmares come true...

Your Valentine Donut

Decisions, Decisions...

Look, I don't know who this woman is, some actress apparently. But when I saw this picture, I had to share it.

I originally spotted part of it in this article.

Doughnut Pizza

Coming soon from Papajohn's?

Doughnut pizza.

Bumper Sticker

Perhaps it's confirmation bias, but I seem to see donuts EVERYWHERE now that I've embarked upon a Year Without Donuts.

Today? A round, frosted, donut bumper sticker.

The Backstory

So here’s how it happened.

Day after New Year’s Day. Church. Only one service (instead of the usual two) and no Sunday School. Instead, they served donuts after the service. I, of course, intended to head straight for the silver platters full of donut-y goodness and indulge.

I walked with a friend. Her daughter was already eating a sprinkled, frosted donut. I mentioned that I’d like to have one. My friend said, “Do you know what’s in those things? Just think of how many of your homemade chocolate chip cookies you could have and still not come close to the sugar and oils in that one donut.”

That stopped me. I thought, well, fine, I would skip donuts today.

As I drove home, I began thinking about my sacrifice. And thinking that maybe I should do more than just skip donuts on that one day. Maybe I could make my spur-of-the-moment sacrifice into a larger statement. To give meaning to my impromptu martyrdom at the temple of the holy donut.

And I thought maybe, just maybe, I would have a Year Without Donuts. Maybe by sacrificing the sugary perfection of the donut for one year, I would learn to appreciate even more the inherent truth and goodness it represented. Maybe I could come out of it with a deeper appreciation for the luscious round treat.

And here’s the thing. It was already brewing in my subconscious. For just the month before, I’d decided to quit Dunkin’ Donuts.

Last Christmas, I encountered a donutpocalypse. But surely, I figured, it was a one-time event. Surely they were out of donuts on that day just because it was so near the holidays.

But it wasn’t a one time event. It kept happening. I’d go to a Dunkin’ Donuts with the intention of grabbing a double chocolate and be disappointed to find none, or to find they only had one or two and they were stale. My wife stopped in to get some for my birthday only to find that they had very few donuts on their shelves, and none that were ones I liked. And I took my kids in a week or so after that, and discovered the same thing. There was only one, one solitary donut of a variety I loved available. I bought it and it was crunchy and stale. And my kids had to share one donut, a frosted cake, the only one they cared to try.

If I go to a Dunkin Donuts in the afternoon, they are completely decimated. There are no donuts to be found in my local Dunkin’ Donuts.

And they aren’t the same. I’ve been riding on a wave of nostalgia for the “time to make the donuts” fresh-to-each-store batches I grew up on. The factory-made and trucked-in hockey pucks they have these days just are not the same.

So I decided I’d had enough. I would no longer bother stopping in at Dunkin’ Donuts. If I wanted a donut, I’d go to Krispy Kreme for a glazed, where at least I knew they'd be Hot Fresh Now.

And so, on that drive home from church, it seemed like a good idea. A Year Without Donuts. Why not? After all, I still had homemade chocolate chip cookies at home. And plenty of coffee…

Dreams and Portents

Yesterday, a friend on Facebook asked if I'd tried the new dark chocolate donut from Krispy Kreme. I confessed that I hadn't and explained that I was living a Year Without Donuts. She was, in a word, horrified, and said she'd have to try it herself.

--

Last night I dreamed we were going into some sort of courtroom. We were scooping up leaves to bring inside with us and spread on the floor. Lots of leaves, all the same - brittle, circular, a very light brown color.

A woman carried the wings of a broken airplane and they were key to the court case. But I had with me the tail section of the plane, upon which was affixed the Dunkin Donuts logo. I showed the woman how the tail section fit perfectly onto her wing section. She was thrilled, wanted me to bring it into the courtroom.

But I warned her, this would make a big difference in the case - it puts the pieces of the plane together but it will mean much less money for us from the jury. So what do you want, I asked, the complete plane or the cash?

I slipped the tail section into my pocket and entered the building. Leaves covered the floor.

--

Meanwhile, as I was trolling the internets this morning, I navigated, as I do every day, to Boing Boing, only to be greeted with this headline: Donuts, Genocide and the American Dream.

Is this confirmation bias, or am I being assaulted with donuts everywhere I turn?

Synchronicity

Last Sunday, I spontaneously decided that this would be a Year Without Donuts.

Then, today, this article came across my RSS feed.

Perhaps I'm not the only one...

Inevitability

It was inevitable, I suppose. Last night I dreamed of donuts.

They were sliced up, cut into bite sized pieces, the pieces themselves strewn across countertops.

I could see them. I could almost touch them. But they remained just out of my reach. No matter what I did, I couldn't get any of the donuts.

What do you suppose this means?

The Year Without Donuts

And lo, I beheld before me a multitude of donuts, arranged on silver trays, plentiful and good. They glistened in their kind, the sugary glazed, the luscious frosting, the bursting creme-filled.

And I saw that they were good.

And I kept my hand at my side.

And I did not partake.

I closed my eyes and walked away, leaving the donuts behind me, casting them from my thoughts. For I knew that their effervescent purity disguised a veritable tub of lard and refined sugars.

And to honor my own sacrifice, to give some sort of meaning to my split-second decision, to make sense of my unexplainable actions, I declared that this would be a Year Without Donuts.

I will no longer partake of the holy donut. I will shun their sugary goodness. I will forsake the sprinkles of peace, I will close my eyes to the frosting of light.

I will be strong. I will give my arteries a rest. I will live an entire year without donuts.

Good thing I baked all those chocolate chip cookies.

UPDATE

The backstory.

Hungry Robots

Yes, we made one of those text-to-movie deals...

http://www.xtranormal.com/watch/8136045