Desserts for Dummies

George W. Bush, if nothing else, is perhaps the most amusing president ever.

http://politicalwire.com/archives/2007/01/29/a_sweet_job.html

Yowza!

Caffeinated doughnuts!

A few random thoughts

1. I had a lovely memory the other day of going to church as a little girl. That's right. No, you heard me. I had a nice memory about church. Because before we started the grocery shopping tradition on Sundays, we went to Sacred Heart Cathedral, conveniently located two blocks from Krispy Kreme. If my brother and I were good (he never was, but he got doughnuts anyway), we'd be taken for doughnuts after mass. Mmmmm, melt-in-your-mouth sugary goodness. Something so delicious makes me so glad to be alive.

2. I've never actually eaten an entire dozen hot Krispy Kremes in one sitting. I understand that a lot of people have done this. Should I? Who's up for joining me?

3. More on Sacred Heart. This is also where I attended first through eighth grade. My best friend during middle school was Lea, and Lea's mom worked down the street from school (in between school and Krispy Kreme). Sometimes Lea and I would go to her mom's office after school and wait there until she was finished with work. I suppose as an attempt to keep us occupied for a few minutes, Lea's mom would give us $5 and let us go next-door to Ham n' Goodies, where they have the best lemon frosted cookies ever. Holy deliciousness, those were good.

4. One last Sacred Heart story. From first grade through third grade, we had no air-conditioning at school. Most people were absolutely miserable, but I didn't mind so much because we went out to the playground every afternoon and had popsicles. Those were the days.

I love CNN

http://www.cnn.com/2006/HEALTH/12/20/health.chocolate/index.html

Finally coming down from my sugar high

I know, I know. It’s been a really long time. How could I eat all those holiday goodies and not even bother to blog about it!

I have no excuse. I’ve been busy. I finished my exams and left immediately on a cruise with my family. It was me, Heather, my parents, my sister, my two brothers, my sister-in-law and my nephew. It was kind of crazy. But we had a lot of fun, and ate LOTS of junk food. By far my favorite thing about the cruise is that they had doughnuts for breakfast. EVERY MORNING. I didn’t discover this until the second morning, which is unfortunate. But I tried to make up for the missed time. They had chocolate covered doughnuts, but it wasn’t like a chocolate frosting, it was like REAL chocolate. So I’d grab one (okay, I’d grab three) and sip my coffee while I sat in the morning sun for a few minutes. Then I’d eat them when the chocolate had melted on top. It was delicious. No Krispy Kreme, of course, but pretty tasty nonetheless.

They had a different dessert every night. My favorite was the first night, when they had a white chocolate fondue with berries. But Heather got ice cream each night and I ate the little cookie that was stuck into the ice cream. We generally tried one of everything. Baked Alaska, chocolate cake, tiramisu, what have you. It was fantastic.

But the best desserts came at the midnight buffets. Yes, for those of you who have never been on a cruise, they have midnight buffets. The amount of food on cruises is simply unbelievable. The dining rooms are only closed about 3 hours a day. There’s only 30 minutes between breakfast and lunch. Two hours between lunch and dinner. And you can always get a snack at the Solarium or the BEN AND JERRY’S! But I digress… The midnight buffets had this little cinnamon cookie dipped in chocolate. Slightly chewy with a crunchy crusty exterior. Yummy. There were also little crème puffs with chocolate on top. And cookies. I’d make myself stay up until midnight just to hit the buffet (and of course it wasn’t hard to convince my mom to stay up with me – I wouldn’t be half the junk food junkie I am without her training). Isn’t that the life, eating your way through the day, struggling to stay up until midnight so you can down one last sugar meal before crashing. For balance, I went snorkeling and horsebackriding, and played a lot of shuffleboard. So all in all, the cruise was good.

Christmas day was pretty uneventful. But I thought of one other redeeming quality about Christmas. Monkey bread! This is a truly amazing concoction with chunks of biscuit rolled in cinnamon and sugar and a butter and brown sugar glaze. I want to meet the person that came up with this idea and shake her/his hand. What a feat! This is a person now at the top of my “celebrity safe list.” Ms. or Mr. Monkey Bread, where are you!??! Anyway, me, Heather, and her brother ate monkey bread, and I made them watch “A Christmas Story” loop for a few hours. We cooked, we cleaned, etc. It was amazingly like a regular day. It was good.

The day after Christmas, I returned to work to find MORE JUNKFOOD. One of our consultants always sends a box of organic, fair-trade yummies (crazy hippy vegans). The enabler intercepted the box when it arrived and stashed a bag of chocolates and cookies in my desk. I also had fudge from a neighbor and cookies (upon which Heather insisted). There are still remnants of the season, but the sugar level of my world is finally returning to normal.

Honestly, after writing this, I realize the main reason I haven’t blogged is that I’ve been too busy eating. Well, deathbydoughnutheads, the feasting has ended. I’m back in school, back to having poptarts for dinner and pizza for breakfast, back to procrastinating and blogging about sugar.