Doughnuts are not good for me. Or you. We know that. No matter how you slice and dice it, those yummy fresh-from-the-oven treats are nothing but fat, carbohydrates, and sugar, probably with a dollop of artificial flavoring. But gee golly whiz, there’s nothing like a couple of warm crullers and a freshly brewed cuppa joe on a frosty morning. Or, if you’re me, any morning.
I love my morning coffee. Much as I complain about the problems of getting old and being poor, retirement has a few perks. The biggest and most obvious is not having to go to work, not having to put up with the idiocies of bosses who know less about the job than the newest intern and base their impossible demands on a spreadsheet.
The other big perk is time. You don’t have to gulp your coffee in the car on the way to the office. Or drink horrible machine coffee in the office. You can brew your own, sit in a comfortable chair with the morning paper, a book, laptop or tablet and savor the experience.
Doughnuts are an extension of this top of the morning experience. As tasty as ever, you can enjoy them with your own or boughten coffee. Locally, the coffee and donuts emporium of choice has always been Dunkin Donuts. Unlike Starbucks whose “dark roasted beans” is a code for “burned coffee,” and whose donuts are clearly not fresh, Dunkin Donuts coffee is mm-mm good and the doughnuts are just out of the oven — at least until 3 in the afternoon.
A couple of times over the past year, in a fit of gustatory nostalgia, Garry picked up a small box of donuts from Dunkin’s to ramp up the quality of our morning coffee experience.
The first time I could barely contain my excitement. As I reached for a second forbidden but delicious doughnut, I discovered it was guarded by a militant-looking cockroach of considerable heft. One of the big ones who is obviously daring you to “bring it on.”
I took the whole box of donuts, roach and all, and dumped them in the trash. As far as I know, we don’t have roaches here. We have ants in season (like now, for example). Mosquitoes the size of sparrows and hungrier than sharks. Slugs and beetles of all kinds in the gardens and who knows what in the woods … but no cockroaches. So I fondly hoped this was an aberration. Surely our local Dunkin Donuts was not packaging cockroaches with the doughnuts? Tell me it ain’t so!
When Garry asked what happened to the donuts, I made some lame excuse like having knocked them off the counter and the dogs getting to them. Garry is a brave man, but he has two phobias: snakes and cockroaches. Both knock the Semper Fi right out of him. I chose to spare him the trauma.
Operating under the optimistic assumption that Dunkin Donuts wouldn’t, couldn’t, shouldn’t include cockroaches with their mouth-watering confections, I encouraged him to pick up a second batch a few weeks later.
I ate a couple of doughnuts. Garry ate a couple of doughnuts. And standing in the box guarding the remaining Boston Creme and Honey Raised, was General Cockroach. I think he had an anti-aircraft weapon strapped to his carapace.
I carried the box and its occupant to the trash. This time, though, I told Garry. He needed to know lest he spontaneously purchases a box of fresh donuts on his way home.
After Garry stopped shivering and muttering “I hate those things,” we agreed we’d take a pass on future purchases from our local emporium. There are plenty of other doughnut shops in town. In fact, the only shops of which our town has more than enough are hairdressers and doughnut shops.
For some reason, we’ve lost our taste for doughnuts. I don’t think either of us has eaten one since.
Odd, isn’t it?
If you haven’t already, you should speak with the manager of that DD and let him or her know why you won’t be buying doughnuts there again. Maybe they’ll make an effort to clean up their act.
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I suppose I could do that. I just didn’t want to get into an argument. Next time I’m in the court, I’ll stop in. They’re going to argue about it and I’m just not in the mood to fight about it. Once? Accident? Twice. Um, no, I don’t think so.
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That’s disgusting and obviously a regular occurrence at that store. It couldn’t be a coincidence. What a shame they ruined doughnuts for you. I like them too, both the iced ones and the small, hot, sugary ones that I first encountered at fairgrounds where they were called American Doughnuts.
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I’ve shopped at many DDs over the years and this is the ONLY one where I had a problem.
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Did they charge extra for the protein (um, cockroach)?
Now that I got that out of my system, I agree that I would never go to that store again. Just the thought! Ugh.
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Yeah. I get the shakes just thinking about it.
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Where’s the photo? That would have been a good one for a challenge at some time I am sure. I don’t like them either. We once lived in a very old building and there were cockroaches: they probably liked the old wooden floors and settled in between. Not that it was an infestation, but that did it for me. I was glad when we moved out.
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When confronted with a cockroach, I don’t stop for photos. I just get it OUT of the house.
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Cockroaches are the worst creatures in the world. If they get into your house you just can’t get rid of them and they get into your appliances. We got some in our house in boxes of fruit and ended up calling in an exterminator in the end.
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Fortunately, we HAVE an exterminator. We’re an annual client. Between the ants and the mice, not to mention the various other things that crawl into the house, we need all the help we can get.
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Cockroaches love cardboard boxes 😦
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Yes, they do. But they REALLY love the ones from Dunkin Doughnuts. Who needs all those calories anyhow?
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Partial to Krispy Kreme myself but such things do not exist here so… 🙂
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Don’t fool yourself. Cockroaches are just waiting to take over the earth.
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What I meant was that Krispy Kreme does not exist here or Dunkin Donuts for that matter.
I’m very familiar with cockroaches after a year on the Tropic of Cancer in China with its open drains etc. And, along the waterfront in San Diego, also.
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We have a lot of private little donut shops. Other places have coffee shops and our donut shops do sell coffee too. But they advertise donuts.
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We have a Mexican bakery. 🙂
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I have never had Mexican baked goods. When I lived in New York, we had a Hungarian bakery. We used to buy pounds of stuff and eat all of it on the way home.
We got fat.
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They are ubiquitous. And they WILL take over the world. Them and the ants.
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I like coffee in the morning, but John will only rob the pot occasionally. That’s bad because I usually only make enough for myself since he usually turns it down. These days it is Beaumont 100 per cent Columbian from Aldi. The price is good and John thinks anything that says Colombian must be good.
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I used to go with Columbian pretty much entirely, but Garry has an abiding passion for Vanilla. Since I like vanilla too, that’s how we fly 🙂
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Yikes! I like muffins better, anyway:)
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We are all muffins now. I don’t trust ANY of the doughnut shops.
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I can’t blame you!
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That would certainly turn you off doughnuts….
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Sure did!
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Think of all the health benefits to that…. 😉
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There are always cookies!
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yes there’s still cookies…
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Leslie, the next to last news director in my career was a krispy creme “queen” fan. She held our morning news meeting, surrounded by the staff, including disgruntled reporters. She was an unpleasant person who had nasty remarks for many of us. As she sliced and diced us conversationally, she ate doughnuts with the cream drooping down the sides of her mouth. Oh, it was terr’ble!
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I shouldn’t say this but, perhaps she”l find one of those creepy crawlies in her doughnut box too sometime.
Leslie 😉
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Say, it, Leslie, say it and FEEL it. She was not a nice person. I don’t say that about many of the suits or dresses I worked for — she was simply a bad person to deal with professionally. I say that with my 40 plus years of dealing with often unpleasant managers.
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😉
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I wouldn’t either. I hate the cockroaches too.
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I suppose I should have reported it to someone. I just gave up donuts. permanently.
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I would but it is very time and effort consuming exercise.
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Especially in a town this small. We don’t even HAVE a town inspector.
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Exactly.
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I vividly remember the DD catastrophe. I sometimes linger at the “fresh” doughnut section in the supermarket but then move on.
I really like our morning routine: Coffee and English Muffins — especially, the “French Toast” english muffins. A good way to start our engines.
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