Today is National Donut Day!

Woke up after 10 hours of weird sleep. Dreamt that L opened a sandwich shop a few 100 feet away from the pizza place, with amazing brisket sandwiches. He was trying to woo me to run it for him. I would only do it if he promised to never be there. I was putting pizza aside for dependence!

I was out doing chores in the neighborhood this morning, when I walked past the local donut shop (with literally some of the best donuts in the world), and they had a chalk board out front announcing that today is, in fact, National Donut Day. How could I not honor that? Unfortunately, the man behind the counter is very familiar with my face, and asked me where I've been lately -- y'know, just working a lot, trying to lose a little weight. I asked him if there was an official donut of National Donut Day, to which he responded a little aghast, "That would be donut discrimination! All donuts deserve to be eaten equally." Really. Well, I think that Mexican churro should be discriminated against. Their churro is so authentic, you want to see if it has a green card!

BREAKFAST 1: 9am, organic cheerios with the good milk, .5 bowl, hunger 4/5

BREAKFAST 2: 10:45am, chocolate donut, .5 bowl, hunger 4/5

PM SNACK: 1:15pm, matzo farfel, .25 bowl, hunger 4/5
Wow! This was the last of the batch I made a few weeks ago, and dah-AM, is it tasty. Very rich, but so tender, moist, flavorful....it froze great, too. I still have a couple of quarts of chicken stock left in the freeze, but once that is gone, I can generate more schmaltz to farfel it up again...

Rufus went nuts licking the farfel bowl...


PM SNACK: 3pm, slice of streetza, .5 bowl, hunger 4/5
I was on an errand that took me to the far side of my neighborhood, past a pizzeria that has been there forever and a day but always seemed just a little bit too...seedy. Off the corner of Essex and Grand, next to the Pickle Guys and across the way from a large high school, Vic's Pizza is a tiny space right out of the early 80s. As in, just recovering from the economic slump of the 70s, hasn't yet cleaned up and redecorated, but has a Ms. Pacman video game to keep up with the times. A large menu of simple Italian dishes on the wall, but no kitchen to be seen. Crappy 2 deck baker's pride oven. Lots of kids, a few Chinese locals, a parent and child, all huddled in from the rain. One man operation, a sullen quiet Hispanic guy. I see him take a large pie out of the oven, the crust as white as Clay Aitken. He starts slicing it and giving it to the kids, collecting money and giving change with the same hands - a major health code violation.

The pizza was undercooked, pale on the bottom, white at the crust, and was that rare combination of flibbidy flobbidy AND dry. And at $2.25, not cheap -- a dollar slice joint can get away with this quality, but not for the full throw. Well, I now know why I've never been there -- the quality of their pie matches their decor.

DINNER: 5:30pm, Ethiopian vegetarian combo, Haaagen Daaaaaz chocolate ice cream, Entemann's chocolate chip cookies, 1.5 bowl, hunger 4/5
B wanted to order in Ethiopian. I used to really like Ethiopian, but have fallen out of love with it since c-school. It just doesn't seem as original or interesting since then. But B wanted it, we got it, and it was pretty good. I picked up the Entemanns because of my emotional connection to them from my childhood, but compared to the homemade cookies I had just a few days ago, it makes me think why anyone would buy these craps. Tasted vaguely stale, vaguely chemically, vaguely fakey.