Tuesday, July 1, 2008

A Three-Donut Vacation: XV. The Museum of Donut History


Donuts of the Paleozoic. These protopastries formed when the oceans were made of hot grease. They survive in sediment because there was no one to eat them.
Except maybe that amoeba toward bottom left.



Donut History: Stone donuts were often elaborately carved.



Cheyenne on a Paleolithic Donut

Written 26 June, 2008

A Three-Donut Vacation XV: The Museum of Donut History

We were in a filing room. But such a filing room! It was immense. There were hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of filing cabinets.

“Don’t these people digitize?” I whispered.

“This is the back entrance,” Sweetie said..

“To what?”

“To the Museum of Donut History.”

“I didn’t realize donuts had a history.”

“Of course they do.” Sweetie had led us to a door, and now she threw it open. “Look!”

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Our contact was late.

We had no choice but to wait. While we did, we learned a great deal about donut history. We walked through displays of famous donuts of history (“Look! The stone donut!” Sweetie exclaimed), donut publicists of the 18th and 19th Centuries, The Cruller Rebellion, Pastries of the Fin de Siecle. We read about the muffin controversy, the ongoing battles with bagel fanatics, and the Beignet Separatist movement.

Sweetie was particularly interested in the Beignet Brigade, which considered punched donut holes a sacrilege. “Mon Dieu!” one member was said to have exclaimed. “If God had meant donuts to have voids, He would not have given us our wonderfully hollow beignets!”

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“Bonjour,” said a voice to our right. “The beignet trees line the Seine. Do you have the countersign?”

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