The Great NYC Donut Tour of 2013

Last week was my fall break from the University of Utah. My only experience with post-secondary education before this year was at BYU, which crams too much into the school year to allow room for breaks. So I had already been anticipating the wonders of a spring break, but when I found out I got a fall break too, I almost didn't know what to do with myself.

But only almost. I hit up my favorite travel destination, New York City, for four days--my first visit in almost a year. The whole trip was great. I saw a lot of friends I hadn't seen for a while, including some who have moved to the city since I last saw them (hooray for the replenishing of my couchsurfing pool!), and met the new babies of my old roommate Ryan, and of David and Marlene McCune, who lived in Omaha the last time I took advantage of their hospitality.

I could write about these fun reunions, the great pizza and burgers I ate, the most expensive movie I've ever seen (Gravity, in IMAX, at NYC ticket prices), or even having to spend the night at JFK on the way home. And maybe I will, someday. But for this post, I'm going to focus on a surprising theme that emerged on my trip: I ate a lot of fancy donuts.

On Friday night I had plans to meet my friend Erin to walk across the Brooklyn Bridge and eat pizza at Juliana's, which is basically the new Grimaldi's, by which I mean the old Grimaldi's, because there's a literal new Grimaldi's right next door. (Google it or ask me about it if you're interested in NYC pizza, it's an intriguing and delicious saga.) She suggested we get dessert first, because she wanted to introduce me to the donut ice cream sandwich at Holey Cream, a little shop in Hell's Kitchen.

They slice a donut in half, then add three scoops of ice cream. I got Milky Way, red velvet (on the clerk's recommendation), and, hiding behind them, oatmeal raisin. All were very good, but the oatmeal raisin was the best ice cream I've had in a long time--it was amazing. Then they ice the top donut half, and you choose a topping for them to dip it in. I got toasted coconut, and it was a winning choice. The creation tastes better than it looks--and admit it, it looks really good, doesn't it?

The next morning, I got up just after 4 AM so I could be in line for a cronut by 5:30 (the bakery doesn't open until 8:00). You may have heard about cronuts and their ridiculous popularity in New York. There are knockoffs sold at other bakeries, but I wanted the real deal. My friend Aja was already in line by the time I got there; in a strange coincidence, the guy next to us in line was a BYU student, in town for a job interview. We quickly made friends with the others around us in line (we were numbers 8 and 9, only 100 or so people get a cronut each morning before they sell out), and the time passed relatively quickly. Finally, the bakery opened, and we bought our treasures.

See, treasure! It even comes in a little gold carrying case. Many have asked if that is butter on top, but it was a banana chip. There's a different flavor every month; October's is caramel apple creme fraiche. I also got the "Perfect Little Egg Sandwich" you see in the background, though it's not actually that little. The brioche bun was delectable.

I was trying to capture the interior layers in this shot, but the picture in the link above does a much better job of that. The name implies that it's a combination croissant-donut, but to me it actually tasted like a reall fancy and delicious and cream-filled churro. I took the second cronut back to share with David and Marlene, and we warmed it up a bit first, even though the bakery advises against that due to the filling. But I think it improved it. In reality, no single food item is worth waiting in line three hours for, but it was very good, I had a lot of fun with Aja and our new acquaintances, and I'm glad I did it.

Later that day, we celebrated Marlene's birthday (a few days early) with a trip to Shake Shack, followed by dessert at Doughnut Plant. I was full of burgers and shakes, so I only got one--a coconut cream. There was a little too much cream for my taste, but the surrounding donut was one of the best I've ever had.

So there you have it. My NYC Donut Tour was over less than 24 hours after it began, but what a tour it was! I can't wait for my next trip--I hear I need to expand the tour to include The Donut Pub.

I don't expect to eat any donuts this weekend, but I do plan on attending Gospel Doctrine class. As noted in last week's post, we'll again be discussing family history work. When you think about it, the gospel is just like your traditional glazed donut--one eternal round. And what could be a better symbol of linking generations together into one great chain through temple and family history work, than the cruller? As the old hymn says, "sweet is the work!"

Reruns

I'm running a clip show for this week's BASOTRUSSL post. A few reasons for this:

1) I'm headed out of town tonight and won't be back until Sunday night; in the interim I won't be on the Internet much.

2) The topic of this week's Gospel Doctrine lesson is almost identical to next week's, so this will save me from having to come up with a second blog idea for this particular subject.

3) Halloween is nearly upon us, and these lessons deal with spirits, the dead rising, and other "supernatural" phenomena, so it's a good fit calendar-wise.

4) I'm very enamored of my own writing, so I like to revisit my old work from time to time and give new readers a chance to see it.

So instead of a new BASOTRUSSL, check out these old ones...

In a post from 2011 (which was actually a repurposing of a 2010 email, making this a copy of a copy, hopefully not with Multiplicity-like effects), I recalled Halloween '99 (copy of a copy of a copy?), when I gave a sacrament meeting talk on the holiday, comparing it to the Atonement.

Then last year, I made some even bigger stretches to relate Halloween to Christ's post-resurrection visit to the Americas. Check it out.

All righty then...back with new content next week. Hope your costumes are all coming along--only two weeks left until the big day!

Replenish and refill

Before I get to this week's BASOTRUSSL (Blog About Something Only Tangentially Related to the Upcoming Sunday School Lesson), a few notes about the last one (which was posted two weeks ago; there was no post last week due to General Conference--more on that in a minute).

In the section on George Albert Smith, I referred to the "You are late"/"But I am clean" story. My friend Petey pointed out that this is actually a Joseph F. Smith story; I was likely thinking of the "What have you done with my name?" story. The Joseph F. dream is better than the George Albert dream, though either way I don't think it would have impacted the rankings. But it's an embarrassing mistake. More on George Albert Smith later on as well.

In that post I also alluded to a negative experience I had with Joseph Fielding McConkie. I just found out that he passed away earlier this week, and now I feel guilty. Not like what I wrote contributed to his death or anything even close to that, but guilty of being negative. I didn't give any details and wasn't overly critical, but this was a situation where following the mantra "If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all" would have been better.Once again, more on this topic coming up later in the post.

Ok. On to this week's stuff.

In years like this one where we cover the Doctrine and Covenants in Gospel Doctrine, the curriculum also includes a small booklet called Our Heritage. Published in 1996, it's a brief overview of LDS history from the birth of Joseph Smith in 1805, through 1995. The book is just 146 pages; the first 65 cover the life of Joseph Smith and associated events, and another 26 are devoted to Brigham Young's term as church president (ending with his death in 1877). That leaves just 55 pages for the next 120-ish years of church history. Needless to say, no single topic or person from that time period is covered in extensive detail.

A portion of this quick historical summary is included with the assigned reading for this week's Sunday School lesson. Mentioned almost in passing is this about the aforementioned George Albert Smith, who had a long history of health problems: "The doctor's order of complete rest eroded his self-confidence, created feelings of worthlessness, and aggravated his tension" (p. 111).

I've likely read that sentence at least four times (once each in 2001, 2005, 2009, and 2013, as this lesson came up each time in the four-year cycle), but paid it little attention other than to think "George Albert Smith was sick a lot. That must have been hard."

The point was driven home much more forcefully in Elder Jeffrey R. Holland's talk at General Conference last week. In the first Conference talk (to my knowledge) to ever explicitly address and focus on mental illness, Elder Holland mentioned that "George Albert Smith...one of the most gentle and Christlike men of our dispensation...battled recurring depression for some years before later becoming the universally beloved eighth prophet and President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints."

I have fortunately never had to deal with depression of this sort, but I know people who are doing so or have in the past. I recommend the study of this sermon to everyone (and all of the other Conference talks; the text and video are already online. but read Elder Holland's first). It can provide encouragement to those who are struggling with this trial, showing through the example of George Albert Smith and others that it is possible to overcome and to thrive, and promising the blessings of the Lord to sustain you while you endure.

It also gives wise counsel for those of us who don't. Basically, it boils down to: Be kind. Don't judge. Listen. Offer help. Pray for them. Overall, just...be nice! It's what I should've done when writing that previous post. If you had to distill a take-home message from Elder Holland's talk down to just one sentence, you couldn't do better than these sage time-traveling poets:

Hoffmann of the Month: October

If you attended Fashion Week last month in New York City (what are you talking about, of course you did) and noticed a "gang of rainbow warriors" parading down the runway, that was the creation of Mara Hoffmann--October's "Hoffmann of the Month!"

Fashion designer Hoffman made the rainbow warrior reference in a backstage interview, where the diversity of her models was also noted. "The Sudanese girls are my muses," she said. "They rule my world." But apparently they don't rule the media's world, as the thumbnail above and the picture accompanying the article where I found these quotes feature blond, white women. Oh well.

I know practically nothing about fashion and even less about runway modeling, which I view as fake fashion (though Hoffman's designs admittedly seem much more like something people would actually wear in real life than most of what I've seen on TV), but apparently Hoffman was one of the (literal) bright spots of Fashion Week. Another writer described her collection as "a pick-me-up if ever there was one," "Technicolor tribal hippie chic on acid," and "a kaleidoscope of fun from a veritable patchouli Pucci." Well then.

The kaleidoscopic effect is certainly evident on Ms. Hoffman's official website. I'm not really in her target demographic, but if any of you buy any of her pieces and want to parade them in front of me, I'll applaud and take pictures.

Congratulations to Mara Hoffman, one of the most colorful Hoffmanns of the Month to date!