Monday, February 20, 2012

just a coffee blend




Donut Store Blend



Gone the way
of the phone booth

and station wagon,
the morning tradition

is dunked, or otherwise
reduced to an essence

added to the grind,
a kind of tribute.

Time-travel across
the politically correct,

wrap one in wax paper,
dribble jelly for old times' sake,

the icing so sweet
it makes your teeth hurt.



tk/February 2012



Listen to R.A.D. Stainforth's sweet reading ... guaranteed to make you dribble jelly ...



60 comments:

  1. Ummmm...yes, I'll have my lah-tay on ice with a dash of bitters, please.
    Later:
    Oh miss, the jelly squirted all over my freshly ironed white shrit. YES, I SAID SHRIT--rhymes with SHIT! OKAY?

    --grin!
    PEACE!

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  2. Exploding donuts...gotta love em. Time honoured "on the road" breakfast.

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  3. tess i miss squeezing into a bad-smelling phone booth and the gish of jelly donuts and being able to eat pb and j at school and so very much more. steven

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  4. The best doughnuts are sold on the beaches of Northern Italy. Filled with a creamy custard; they are Heaven on Earth, but not for dunking.

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  5. A slice of America that has its resonances here too, Tess. So sweet you could stand your spoon up in it!

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  6. Tess the joys of a delicious coffee and my favorite a custard filled donut with chocolate cream on top!

    xoxo
    Karena
    Art by Karena

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  7. Such good imagery, and I can feel a painful yearning for a simpler past.

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  8. Wow.....you can actually *feel* that.........
    :)

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  9. I am too old for a phone booth to feel obsolete but of course it is. Ouch. The donut shop on the corner is still there but it's now a struggling independent. The franchise pulled out. I don't use it and haven't since long before that change. Sometimes I see people sitting in there and they look like they go there for connection.

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  10. States well where we are today on once accepted things. As good as this past sounds, and tastes, I think we are slowly evolving to a better place.

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  11. Best donuts in the world? Krispy Kreme.

    Worst coffee in the world? Dunkin' Donuts.

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  12. You know you are aging when..... (too bad the person in charge of the painful teeth hasn't gone the way of the phone booth). I liked the back and forth 'time' lingo through the past and the present in a weave through your phrasing. Sweet, but not painful. Thank you for sharing.

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  13. Warning! Warning! Do not read on empty stomach!

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  14. Oh, I do love a good a dunk - traditional or otherwise....!!

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  15. Days of things gone by. A great read Tess!

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  16. I never met a donut I didn't like,
    even the ugly ones; worked in
    some donut shops though, and
    that will slack your appetite a bit;
    Really liked this piece, Tess, for
    like so many of yours, there is
    poetry between the lines, a sad
    treatise on the demise of things
    once practical, now extinct.
    Progress can be a vindictive shrew.

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  17. Love it! Very clever approach, Tess.

    ~Shawna
    rosemarymint.wordpress.com

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  18. the wax paper never quite sealed soundly, but it made a great placemat for my PB&J, eaten at 6:30 AM in the deserted school cafeteria, where I sat alone after singing solo responses to the priest, during the weekday early morning high mass as a youngster in grade school... I enjoyed the comfortable nostalgia of your piece here Tess...

    rob
    Image & Verse

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  19. nice tribute to many of the passing days...an essence of it in the coffee now...i love jelly donuts....raspberry....

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  20. Nice, Tess. And like Brian...I love raspberry donuts :)

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  21. I remember spending weekends with my uncle as a kid. He worked at Dunkin Donuts and we would have donuts for breakfast and lunch :) I loved this reminiscent piece, Tess

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  22. I love the time travel, but that should be a police box, not a phone booth, lol.

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  23. HI Tess, I have to say Krispy Kreme does pretty well in NYC, but I agree with you--even that has the kitschness of imitating another time. Thanks for the jam. K.

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  24. Christopher may not have been to that doughnut shop lately but I bought him a doughnut from there not to long ago...

    And the coffee was crap, but not the good old crap...it was the new fangled special rost from the tip top of some fricken place I'll never be and hand carted by himilaian doung beetles crap! Liked the poem by the way:-)

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  25. There's a sweet nostalgia here that has deeper roots in what Tarkovsky manages to get onscreen. It doesn't have the Russian angst, or terror of Soviet graydom, but there is a sense of loss of something important. I'm not attached to too many forms of nostalgia, since it often has connotations of Lawrence Welk for me, but time has definitely brought me to appreciate and savor the routines that once meant so much to me as a child. I think Borges has this lovely poem about the things on his desk and memory invests them with power and meaning beyond their simple material presence. I like that and I like this poem for its reminder of such things.

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  26. well done! a nice bit of nostalgia that seems to go backwards and forwards with the pic ...

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  27. And before there was after. Nice nostalgia, sweetly iced.

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  28. Time travelling, across the politically correct, can be an eye-opener.

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  29. Jelly donut can be treat,why not! Strawberry and blueberry fills too!

    Hank

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  30. Great nostalgia for things that pass...it's the jelly that got me!Thanks!

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  31. I always got teed off when the phone books were ripped or missing!
    thanks.

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  32. Yup - old ways, old things, old eating habits...I'm on a Weight Watchers diet (online). Although donuts were never my downfall I'd kill for one of those custard ones with my coffee right now...sigh

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  33. Definitely feeling the sweet ache of nostalgia...so evocative for me this morning.

    =)

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  34. That last line is so true - especially as you get older and the enamel wears thin. Nice one!

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  35. Politically correct and tasty to! Love this Tess! :-)

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  36. So love this.. Yes, gone - one can't even enjoy eating a donut these days without feeling guilty. I remember every Sunday my dad would stop at the donut shop... perhaps it was a bribe for us to behave in church... but it worked! :)

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  37. Ah, gone those doughnuts, even the ones filled with English Spelling!

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  38. yummm...Krispy...Kreme...Beignets will always taste old fashioned


    Peace and thanks for the venue Tess

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  39. Ah, nostalgia. So many good things going.

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  40. nice there are some of us around to remember

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  41. Oh yes, the sweetness of nostalgia.

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  42. Dear Tess: Very tasty nostalgia wrapped in "wax paper" memories and "dribble jelly"...my favourite donut!

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  43. nice one Tess...thanks again for this

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  44. This was fun, ironic and somewhat sad. And we don't really have that donut culture here. I think it is a tribute to your skill that you evoked such an emotional response in me when I don't even have the ability to relate to the specific scenes you portray. :)

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  45. You did it again...so well done!

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  46. One of my grand kids asked me what a "phone booth" is. I want donuts...
    Nice writing...

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  47. Haven't seen a phone booth in this country in I don't know how long!
    Old relics passing into and out of memory.
    rel

    Now donuts on the other hand.....:)

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  48. so many insights in this piece. loved this:

    "Time-travel across
    the politically correct"

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  49. Thank you dear readers for your most generous comments...I know I always say this but you are the best readership in the entire blog world...each of your comments mean so very much...

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  50. A wonderful, vivid scene. Made me smile. :)

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  51. Love this - thanks for the smile.

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  52. Oh I love that - "wrap one in wax paper,
    dribble jelly for old times' sake." There's something wonderful about baked goods in wax paper.

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Inject a few raisins of conversation into the tasteless dough of existence.
― O. Henry (and me)