Breakfast

This is a delicious pudding filled long john.
















And this is a donut. A real donut.

As much as I love Germany, there is one thing that the country as a whole just doesn't get, and that's donuts. Sure, my German readers may be saying "Aha! Sarah really is a true American!" right now, but this donut thesis is true. The donuts you can buy in any German establishment claiming to sell donuts are not donuts at all, but creepy, airy, bready things of no substance. This morning I woke up and said "I want a donut for breakfast." This is not something that happens often, I probably haven't truly craved a donut in years, but just the thought of a delicious, sweet, cakey donut, fresh from the bakery where I worked 10 years ago along with my coffee this Saturday morning got me all fired up for the 10 minute drive into town.
I must admit, the pudding filled long john is what I truly craved, and it wasn't as good as I remembered. Somehow they've changed the recipe, and there was very little pudding inside, making it a true disappointment. But the donut, that delicious, cakey, frosted thing with sprinkles on it was just perfect. An authentic donut actually consists of cake batter which has been dropped from an apparatus that makes it round with the hole in the center into a deep fryer. Deep frying that cake batter is what makes the donut so sinfully good and crispy. Then it's frosted, more or less with pure sugar mixed with a little water, and can be topped with a number of things, like nuts, sprinkles or cinammon sugar. I prefer the sprinkles, because they step up the already extreme sweetness of the sugary frosting, putting you almost into a sugar coma.
But please don't think I've lost all of my good taste: yesterday after work I met with some of my other foreign language teacher colleagues, and we snacked in a classy way. First we had French cheeses and baguette, and topped it all off with a fruit tart made here in Michigan by a real French pastry chef. Unfortunately I didn't get a picture of that, but it was just beautiful. Much prettier than the donuts. And delicious. It had a lightly sweet, buttery crust, topped with a thin layer of creamy cheese filling, then covered with artfully arranged fruit, and finally glazed with apricot glaze. Mmm.