Apple Foot

Up With Autumn

Yesterday the (seasonal) pumpkin muffin reappeared at Dunkin' Donuts. The pumpkin muffin is one of the consolations of the end of summer, along with the beginning of school marching band.

Healthy Dining

Last month my mother and I stopped by a Burger King in eastern Pennsylvania. In the drive-thru, I noticed advertisements for a triple-Whopper with cheese and "cheesy tots" (deep fried tater tots stuffed with cheese). First, I find these foods unappealing. On a broader level, though, they're prime examples of what nutritional doomsayers have been shouting about Americans, obesity, and the Super-Sized Meal. I have mixed feelings about all that, since I think that Americans' increasing weight issues are leading to a public health crisis, but I'm also fat, so step off, bitch.

The piece de resistance, though, was affixed to the windows and doors of the fine establishment: "We're listed in HealthyDiningFinder.com" (no, I won't link to it.) Naturally, I had to look up this web site to see what sort of group lists Burger King, home of the triple Whopper with cheese, as healthy dining. Silly me: it's a link farm, of course.

I never would've thought of that

Message on the box of my Stouffer's frozen mac & cheese:  "Serving suggestion: COOK THOROUGHLY".

Sugar shortage

Every morning I (along with most of the population of greater Boston) trudge into the nearest Dunkin' Donuts.  In the summer, I get a large iced coffee, black, and usually a muffin.  I like to add a little sweetener to the coffee, just to take off the bitter edge.  I find that DD employees have much too heavy a hand with the sugar, so I always add my own at the straws & napkins area.

A few weeks ago, the little packets of Splenda and Sweet 'n' Low disappeared from the do-it-yourself area.  I gritted my teeth and used real sugar.  This week, even the real sugar's gone, replaced with little coupons or handouts for theme parks or something.

I know Splenda's been expensive, but have sugar prices gone up? The only news stories I located in a quick search indicate that's the case in India and Pakistan (where, apparently, the government is concerned about sugar hoarding), but I didn't see anything similar re: US prices.

The thought of actually asking the folks behind the counter for a packet of sugar stresses me out-- there's a lot of ways in which it triggers my social anxieties.  So now I'll learn to drink my iced coffee black, no sugar.

Which, actually, works well with my increasing hypochondria about potential diabetes.

We've got something like 600 Dunkin Donuts shops in greater Boston.  The chain started in Quincy, is headquartered in Randolph, runs its training center in Braintree.  Adam Sandler did a funny sketch (full transcript) on SNL once in which a Jeopardy-like game challenged New Englanders to give directions from point A to point B:  the directions tended to involve DD landmarks.  A couple years ago I came home and saw on the news that someone had driven through the front window of a Dunkin' Donuts in Malden; I'd been by 3 Malden DD shops on my way home that night, and it wasn't any of those.