Cronut™, no.

F you.

In the foodie culture of NYC, it seems different sweet baked goods are being celebrated in a cycle. It is like how the gossip press elevate and tear down celebrities in an unending, deeply frivolous cycle: it encourages people to continue to buy the magazines and watch the "news" programs. The first such cycle in recent memory was cupcakes.

This was probably my favorite, for a few reasons. One, a cupcake is something a parent can make with a child - it is both a treat and utilitarian and has a nice individual serving size. It's flexible enough that you can really supercharge the quality and creativity of the item or you can strip it down to Betty Crocker mix and a tub of shelf-stable frosting and it's still not going to be that bad. Secondly, I have a friend who is a bit of a foodie and was way into cupcakes, so in that she created and ran a big cupcake event a few years in a row.

I actually participated in the last one, because it so reflected the common-man greatness of how anyone can do a cupcake and I wanted to share my friend's enthusiasm. There was a minimal charge to enter the event, but if you made a dozen cupcakes and brought them, you got in for free, got entered in competition and were among the first to eat as many f'ing cupcakes as you could get down your throat. (Being both in the middle of a period of pizza-obsession and naturally contrary, I made "pizza cupcakes": lightly sweetened whole-wheat muffin studded with basil and oregano, filled with sweetened marscapone, topped with a floret of sweetened ricotta and topped with a half grape-tomato to resemble a cherry. Suffice to say, I did not win.)

Though there are a smattering of cupcakeries downtown from this boom that started with Sex & the City's elevation of the Magnolia Bakery, the bloom was off the rose by the mid to late 2000s, but the recession still allowed "humble" foods to take center stage. Soon, magazines and media were trumpeting the donut as the latest craze in the elevation of affordable sweet treats. The snooty French macaron came and went. Artisinal syrups to create old-timey sodas was a thing. A few years later, ice cream and ice cream sandwiches got their season in the sun.

F you.

But the low point of this pastry cycle of celebrity is the latest one. It is the Kim Kardashian of Kake. It is stupid. It is the Cronut. For those who don't know (or don't particularly care,) the Cronut was supposedly invented by Dominique Ansel, a French baker in downtown NYC with a self-named shop. The Cronut is the fusion of a doughnut and a croissant. When I first heard it, my first two thoughts were:

1. Isn't a French Cruller exactly that?
2. Didn't we do this when we were messing around in c-school?

If you look at the cronut website, there is a lot of pretense that it is oh so much more complicated than just deep frying a croissant. I'll say this: making croissant dough by hand is a huge pain in he ass. It is a relatively wet, eggy dough that gets "laminated": the dough is wrapped around a block of butter in a cold, temperature-controlled space, rolled out, folded, rolled out again, folded, etc etc until there are 100s of barely perceptible layers of butter and dough that when baked, the butter cooks away to allow for the flaky texture. Ansel is basically just messing with ratios, laminating doughnut dough, and getting precious with the garnishes. And marketing. Don't forget the hype.

Don't forget what Flavah Flav once said: Don't believe the hype! (Boyeeeeeee!)

I remember in culinary school, taking the day to make croissant dough, and after taking a square and rolling it into a traditional croissant shape, some people took cookie cutters, or made various shapes, and a few of those ended up in the deep fryer and treated like a doughnut -- it's a natural mode of thought for a fatty sweet dough, and we didn't try to friggin' trademark it either.

I admit, I have not had a Cronut™, because I will not spend more than the time it takes to get to the shop to get one, rather than the lines that seem to forming by people with out enough to do. The other night, I was out out with a good friend from my restaurant days who now lives full time in France. We're very different in a ridiculous amount of ways I won't list here, but we have something very strong in common: a near identical curiosity and love for food, and point-for-point clear way of thinking about it. For dinner, we went for taxi stand Indian food and ate it in a public park, and for dessert, we hunted down a cronut knock off. The first place I could think of in walking distance was Dessert Club, the outlet bakery of Chickalicious, a fancy sit-down dessert-only emporium. Indeed, they had a "dough'ssant" and it was pretty...miserable. Too big, too fatty, the "creme brûlée" flavor muted and the texture less like a croissant-doughnut and more like a .....French Cruller from Dunkin' Donuts. My friend brought an extra one to bring to her very French inlaws, who were also in town. I'm sure they took great pleasure in seeing America fail and flail at an attempt at speaking their food culture.

Cronut? Abominationeur! Haw haw hawwww!

What would I like to see as the next dessert trend? Well, if it's not super simple things that anyone can dig deep in their own kitchen like the chocolate chip cookie or the brownie, then let's go outward into "ethnic" desserts. Funny, I'm a big fan of all Asian cuisines but Asian sweets cause me to run for the exits screaming. Mooncakes with jellied egg yolks in the middle? No. Chinatown Ice Cream Company feels as authentic as Spam Lo Mein. Why does so many Middle Eastern desserts reek of friggin' rosewater? Greek sweets taste of some combination of honey and pistachio, and that's about it. Not a fusion or dilution of multinational sweets, but an elevation of the quality of ingredients and leveling of balance of flavors to reflect a society where sweets are common, so don't have to be overpoweringly sweet or fragrant to make up for it's scarcity.

Burgers, crappy donuts and DIET coke? Yep, sounds like the Kim Kardashian of diets.

And don't even get me started about the Cronut™ burger.

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They're coming for my cookies. Leave my cookies alone, bears!

Yo momma can't make a cronut, unless she has training and/or works in a restaurant or bakery. The thing about certain foods that hold the biggest places in our hearts is how they fit in our relationships. What can be more loving that something a momma makes by hand to give and nourish her child? It's probably not going to be as pretentious or preening as a cronut....

My relation to sweets have been changing since starting this blog, and I've become much more aware of my kid's relationship with them, too. Thinking about my childhood, I've kicked up a few strong memories that have taken me by surprise....

My first summer at summer camp was when I was 9 years old. It was for 4 weeks, and at the 2 week mark, it was visiting day and my parents took the 150 mile car trip from NYC to the north east corner of Pennsylvania.  All the other kids got a TON of junk food and bags of chips and soda and cookies and cakes and on and on. The only food item I got from my parents as a treat was a bag of chocolate chip cookies that my mom made, most likely from the recipe on the back of a bag of Tollhouse chips. The chips were over-sized. My mom never baked chocolate chip cookies before, only cakes or brownies from a mix. It made me so happy, AND they left me with the whole bag!

That evening, after the parents left, all the campers in the division were commanded to take out ALL the food they received that day and place it on the picnic table at the center of the bunks. We were told to eat up now, because the rest were being thrown away. It was for sanitary reasons -- we were in the middle of the woods, after all, without refrigeration or bear-proof containers. I did not want to give up my cookies; it didn't seem fair. Thing was that I wasn't even planning on eating them, I just wanted to....have them, as long as possible, until I went home and saw my parents again. I asked a counselor if I could put my cookies away instead, but was told no. So as soon as all the food was presented on the table, a count was given then all the kids attacked the table. I just went straight for my cookies and nothing else. I ate them all. I didn't want any one else to have my mom's cookies. It was so much better than the stupid bags of stuff you could buy anywhere. You can't BUY a mom's cookies!!

Those cookies were love, trust, affection, respect, independence, comfort, and chocolate, all wrapped into one. As I sit here, 42 years old with children of my own and slowly unpuzzling my relationship to food and health, I still crave to eat those cookies again. I don't crave more home-baked chocolate chip cookies, I actually crave those specific cookies my mom made by hand for me in the summer of 1980.

Unsurprisingly, after eating the whole lot during that hot summer twilight and not even being hungry, I threw up right there amidst everyone was eating. Someone had to do it, to make a stand for what was right and honorable: this isn't just junk, this isn't just disposable crap to quench our jones. This is real food, this is special, this is unique to me and my mom. You can't buy a mom's cookies.

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WEEKLY AVERAGE: 2335

Good eating week, especially considering I had the double stress of having my work move to a new office starting on Monday, then putting in multiple early mornings with not enough sleep to cook knishes for the Grub Street event on Sunday. It all went smoothly, and by Friday I was happy with how it went.

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MONDAY COUNT:2560

SLEPT: 9pm-4am, 7 hours

Woke up and lifted. Won't get to again this week, as after tomorrow morning's ride, gotta focus on knishing for the weekend. Job moved into a new office, today, nice n' white n' clean. Part of the welcome pack was a friggin' Hershey bar. Threw it out. If your going to tempt me with chocolate, make it edible, non-sour dark chocolate, puhleeze.

AM SNACK: 4:30am, iced green tea, 0 cal

BREAKFAST: 7:15am, apple/beet/celery/carrot/ginger/cayenne/cucumber juice, 160 cal

BREAKFAST 2: 10:30am, steel cut oatmeal, 415 cal

LUNCH: 12:30pm, small chicken wrap, small brisket wrap, handful of tortilla chips, tbsp of guac, a dolop of salsa fresca, water, a large scoop of lightly dressed green salad, +/-600 cal
No microwave ready to use in the new office yet, so left my frozen/cold n' mealy food for tomorrow. Was tempted to go out for fast food, where the calories are known, but decided not to be a weirdo and ate the nice lunch of the job provided for staff. I figure if I just ate small portions and paid attention to how caloric it 'felt', I'd be OK for one damn meal.

PM SNACK: 3 pm, momma salad, hummus, 150 cal

PM SNACK: 4:30pm, poppa salad with homemade Italian, 150 cal

DINNER: 7:15pm, mahi mahi, roasted asparagus, kimchi, Fritos, 785 cal

EVENING SNACK: 7:45pm, cheetos, 300 cal

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BIKE CREDIT: 650 cal

TUESDAY COUNT: 2195

SLEPT: 8pm-3am, 7 hours

Got a nice deep sleep, despite the minimum amount. Good ride, first early morning ride in too long.

AM SNACK: 3:15am, granola bar,  iced green tea, 575 cal

BREAKFAST: 7:15am, apple/beet/celery/carrot/ginger/cayenne/cucumber juice, 160 cal

BREAKFAST 2: 9:45am, whole fage with almonds, agave and vanilla, 310 cal

LUNCH: 12:45pm, falafel, homemade matzoball-mushroom soup, health salad, pickle, 600 cal
New microwave arrived in new office, ahhhh.

PM SNACK: 3:30 pm, momma salad, hummus, 150 cal

PM SNACK: 4:30pm, poppa salad with homemade Italian, 150 cal

DINNER: 7:15pm, grilled pork loin, roasted brussels, quinoa, 600 cal

EVENING SNACK: 7:45pm, fritos, 300 cal
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WEDNESDAY COUNT: 2250

SLEPT: 8:30pm-4am, 7.5 hours

Very busy at work, good thing all my food was prepped and thought out well in advance, or I'd be totally f'd. I remember years ago, at a different job, if I was super busy, I would gorge as fast as possible on restaurant food to relieve the stress. (Funny, when super busy at the restaurant, I would eat on my feet to stay energized, and though I was technically gorging, I was also maintaining or losing weight. A rare advantage to shitty restaurant work....)

AM SNACK: 4:15am, iced green tea

BREAKFAST: 7am, apple/beet/celery/carrot/ginger/cayenne/cucumber juice, 160 cal

BREAKFAST 2: 9:45am, steel cut oatmeal, 415 cal

LUNCH: 1pm, grilled pork loin, roasted brussels, quinoa, 600 cal

PM SNACK: 4 pm, momma salad, hummus, 150 cal

PM SNACK: 5pm, poppa salad with homemade Italian, 150 cal

DINNER: 8:30pm, stir fried shiritaki noodles & shrimp with mushrooms and black bean sauce, 475cal

EVENING SNACK: 8:45pm, cheetos, 300 cal
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THURSDAY COUNT: 2290

SLEPT: 10pm-3am, 5 hours

Got home after 8 due to responsibilities, and though I was in bed by 9, just too wired from a busy day to fall right asleep. Had to wake early to forge on at the goal of producing 200 knishes for Sunday, despite having no normal hours to do it.

Worked late. Was offered dinner on the company, but politely declined, just wanted to speed through the work and not eat calorically suspicious restaurant food. Ended up hitting Mickey D's, not great, but to quote their marketers, was part of a well-balanced diet, he he. Balanced, meaning once every six months!

AM SNACK: 3:15am, iced green tea

BREAKFAST: 7am, apple/beet/celery/carrot/ginger/cayenne/cucumber juice, 160 cal

BREAKFAST 2:  9:45am, whole fage with almonds, agave and vanilla, 310 cal

LUNCH: 1pm, grilled pork loin, roasted brussels, quinoa, 600 cal

PM SNACK: 3:30 pm, momma salad, hummus, 150 cal

PM SNACK: 5:30pm, poppa salad with homemade Italian, 150 cal

DINNER: 8:45pm,  quarter pounder, fries, diet coke, 920 cal
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FRIDAY COUNT: 2380

SLEPT: 10pm-3am, 5 hours

Got another short night of sleep, urg. Worked late, couldn't be helped, and then had to get up for another morning of the knishing.

AM SNACK: 3:15am, iced green tea

BREAKFAST: 6:30am, apple/beet/celery/carrot/ginger/cayenne/cucumber juice, 160 cal

BREAKFAST 2:  8:45am, fruit smoothie, 410 cal

LUNCH: 1pm, chicken meatballs, madras lentils, steamed string beans, 660 cal

PM SNACK: 3 pm, momma salad, hummus, 150 cal

DINNER: 7pm,  mixed perogies & sour kraut, ice cream cone, +/- 1000 cal

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WEEKEND REPORT

Weird sleeping. I got to bed at 8 on Friday with the intention of waking at 4 to finish my knishing, but woke at 1am and couldn't fall back to sleep, so I just got up and got to work. Pooped out by 8 on Saturday night, and had no alarm, ended up sleeping 9 hours. Ate too much both days, got some kid-transporting biking in, but not enough to make up for the binging.