Have you noticed that, on a blog called “Donuts and Desires,” I have yet to make a single post about…
…donuts?…
“Raspberry Jelly,” AKA “What’s a girl gotta do to get a jelly-filled donut around here?”
Confused yet? I’m talking about Tim Horton’s, the pride of Canada, birthplace of rrroll-up-the-rrrim (which I never win, by the way), THE place to go for coffee and a donut. So, if Tim Hortons is the donut capital of Canada, I have to ask the question: Where have all the donuts gone?
In a donut shop, you expect to find donuts. Am I right? When I go into Tim Horton’s these days, I look out into the sea of bagel and cookies, dismayed by the distinct lack of variety where donuts are concerned. Sure, there are a few crullers, some Plain Jane old-fashioneds, a few Boston Creams if you’re lucky, but never jelly-filleds.
You are familiar with the donuts I’m referring to, are you not? They’re shaped like a hockey puck, filled with raspberry jelly and doused in icing sugar. The quintessential donut. Homer’s delight.
So where are they? What happened to them? I’d assumed Timmy’s had simply out every time I was here, that they weren’t baking enough of these delicious morsels. Yesterday I was at the drive-thru with my sister (and don’t get my started on the environmental abomination that is the drive-thru – that’s a story for another day).
At any rate, since we were at the drive-thru, my sister ordered a donut blindly (a free donut, by the day. SHE always wins roll-up-the-rim. Some girls have all the luck!) She ordered a raspberry jelly-filled. The disembodied voice at the other end of the intercom replied, “We don’t carry those.”
Don’t carry them? Don’t carry the powdered raspberry jelly-filled donut? The donut of kings? What is the world coming to when the quintessential donut shop stops carrying the quintessential donut? I can only hope the disembodied voice was referring to that location only. I just can’t bring myself to believe every Timmy’s could stop carrying this variety, even if the icing sugar does coat your clothes and the jelly does spurt out of the pastry.
And what ever happened to the Tim Horton’s of yore? The Tim Horton’s of my childhood? The Timmy’s where you walked in the door, greeted by the scent of freshly-baked mounds of sugary dough? (Ok, that’s a false memory – the sickly smell of cigarettes, more like.) Most importantly, what happened to those colourful fields of donuts?
Ah, but nothing golden-brown can stay… especially if it’s sprinkled with sugar and filled with raspberry jelly.