St. Patrick's Day donuts

Good news everyone! The seasonal St. Patrick's donuts have appeared well before St. Patrick's Day, allowing me to have donuts last week! Yay! My particular favourite is the chocolate donut, with chocolate frosting and green sprinkles. The green sprinkles are mint flavoured, making it a chocolate mint donut! My ultimate donut surely! Actually, it isn't as tasty as the kreme filled, heart shaped donut - my one true donut love. 

You've got to eat your greens....

And just in case you think that the green donut is that green because of some kind of hipster instagram filter, allow me to show you a unmodified picture, with iced coffee for colour scale (you've got to have something for scale).

Have you seen Re-Animator? It's not far off being as bright as the day-glo re-animator fluid....

Luminous, eh? I feel I use the word luminous a lot in this country, particularly when talking about food. The other disturbing thing about the bright green donut is the fact it doesn't really have a flavour. The icing just tastes of sugar.

So I have obviously used up my seasonal donut allowance for March now. Sad face. However, I did learn something new in Dunkin' Donuts last week. Sprinkles here appear to also be known as "jimmies" (here is wikipedia proof!). I discovered this useful new word by eavesdropping on the man behind me in the queue asking for a donut with jimmies, and receiving one with sprinkles. New country = new language! Now I must find something with "jimmies" on, and try out the new word. Perhaps I do get to go to Dunkin' Donuts next week after all......

In other seasonal food news, McDonald's is doing a Shamrock Shake for March. It's very green and mint flavoured. A small one also has a staggering 540 calories. Don't worry. I'm on it. And I promise to go to the gym for an hour and a half afterwards. You can look forward to more brightly coloured photos of food in the future. Because I am the BRAVE EXPLORER! 

I'll adventure more soon - I promise.

Farewell donuts

I am giving up, or at least severely cutting back on the Dunkin' Donuts. Mainly because they are bad for my waistline, my wallet and my midmorning mood (Hello, Sugar crash!). So having decided to give up the donuts on anything but a special occasion (e.g. fancy white kreme filled heart shaped Valentine's donuts), my only reason for going to Dunkin' Donuts was to buy my nice iced coffee morning treat. However, I was basically unable to go into Dunkin' Donuts to get an iced coffee and not buy a donut or two. They have those big signs that you get in fast food joints advertising "combos" (1 bagel and a coffee $4!, 2 donuts and a coffee, $3.50!). I think I have spent too much time playing/watching people play computer games as when I see words like "combo" I kind of feel like I get more points when I get the combo. Even though clearly Dunkin' Donuts is the winner, as they get my coins, not the other way around.

Given that I do not have the will power to go to Dunkin' Donuts and just buy a coffee I needed to find a way to satisfy my need for caffeine in the morning. I have a nice pink cafetière that I use to make hot coffee on very cold days, but I tend to prefer iced coffee first thing in the morning. So I bought a special iced coffee making french press from Bodum. I like it, it's purple. I'll explain how it works properly at some later point, but the important point here is that I no longer have any excuse to go to Dunkin' Donuts (except for when there might be special edition donuts, like around St. Patrick's Day!). Thank you for the memories Dunkin'....

America runs on Dunkin'

Bye donuts... I'll miss you!

At least I have Lucky Charms and Smorz cereal at home. And Ice Cream Shoppe Pop Tarts!

Note the homemade ice coffee on the left! Victory is mine!

What are you drinkin'? Not Dunkin' anymore. I should go back and buy some coffee for brewing there. Everyone who works in there was very friendly to me, I really appreciated it when I first arrived and I would show up at Dunkin' really early in the morning because of the jetlag!

Mostly, since I arrived in Boston, I have been eating

The student center at MIT has a 24 hour Dunkin' Donuts. I lasted approximately three days before I became aware of this fact, which is surprising as I am normally almost preternaturally good at locating junk food outlets. I can already locate three Starbucks within a mile, I know where McDonalds is and have been to nearly every Chipotle in the walkable/T-able Boston area. I have been here for less than two weeks. However, now I know about the Dunkin' Donuts I am there most mornings, buying my iced coffee with milk (things picked up when I realised milk was option and it wasn't just black coffee or coffee with cream). I've provided an illustrative figure on the left, because I have to justify all the pictures I'm taking of food somehow.

Instagr.am-ed patriotic sprinkles donut. Note the star sprinkles
and how hipster Instagr.am makes me - my new life is so cool.

Unfortunately the donuts are tempting (notice the paper bag in the illustrative figure). My first Boston donut was, appropriately, a Boston Kreme Donut (oh good grief, the nutritional information is not obvious in store, this is not California! Why did I have to look that up on the internet? The truth is inescapable now). Boston Cream pie is relatively famous - here is proof in the form of a wikipedia article. My first Boston Cream pie experience actually occurred in Santa Barbara, California, (nearly 5 years ago!) but I have subsequently had one in Boston and they're pretty good. And so, when I saw Boston Kreme (not cream) donuts on the menu at Dunkin' Donuts I thought I should try one - it would be a traditional foodstuff, I would be *exploring* my new territory.... The Boston Kreme Donut is a custard filled, chocolate frosted donut. It is not exactly a breakfast item. Obviously I thoroughly enjoyed the sugar and caffeine roller coaster and so I have been returning to the donut shop most mornings. The cereal I have in my room at the moment isn't much better to be totally honest; Lucky Charms (heavily depleted, also note the banner at the bottom right hand corner of the link-"Hey Kids, this is advertising!"), Honey Nut Cheerios, Chocolate Frosted Mini Wheats and low sugar (?!) apple and cinnamon porridge. One of these items is not like the others... In my defence I haven't bought Pop Tarts yet, even though there is a hot fudge sundae flavour (note that it is naturally and artificially flavoured), and I also have not bought the following cereals: S'mores cereal (styled as Smorz), Brownie cereal, Cookie cereal, Fruity Pebbles, Tony's Turboz (but only because I haven't seen the last ones - don't worry Ali, I'm looking).

As if eating a donut for breakfast wasn't bad enough I have now discovered that it only costs an extra 30 cents (or some other amount made of smallish coins I don't yet understand) to have TWO donuts instead of one. It's a slippery slope. And EVEN WORSE, they have started to do a Valentine's special donut, which is shaped like a heart, has chocolate frosting AND chocolate chips and is filled with that unnaturally bright white, sweet, totally non-dairy "cream" (or kreme at Krispey Kreme and Dunkin' Donuts). You know, the kind of filling you get in Twinkies, a sugary snack food so unnatural that a) I won't eat them and b) they are a subplot of post-apocalyptic film Zombieland, due to their ability to not decompose, or really even change at all over time. There is even a *really, really* BRIGHT pink donut that is also shaped like a heart (I haven't tried that yet! Maybe the "kreme" filling is strawberry flavour?)

I obviously have to cut back on the donuts. Especially the unnaturally luminous/flavourful ones. I'm thinking once a week, and only buy one? Does that sound reasonable?

♥ I HEART YOU, lovely kreme filled chocolatey donut ♥ 

Donuts tried to date: Boston Kreme, Jelly Stick (ug - terrible), Sprinkles, Chocolate Heart (comfortably the most unnaturally delicious - good thing it's seasonal)