Donuts: Scarcity = Specialness

Melinda with the Toyota Echo named Spot

Several years ago my beloved Toyota Echo started to fail me while we were at a bird festival in Salt Lake City.  I spent the day in the Toyota dealership where they worked on the Echo.  Melinda spent the day with other sisters. As the day wore on I decided to ask about other cars, after all I had been looking online for a new car for more than a year now.  I drove out with a new leased Rav4 complete with navigation system.  I don't know if it was user error, programming fairies, or magic but the first address we found in the Nav system was for a donut shop in Wichita Falls TX.  We'd never been there nor how or why it was in the system. So in 2017 Shanna and I decided that we might as well find out what was up with this donut shop.

Toyota Rav4 Hybrid named Rafe Jr with travel buddy named Skittles

It did exist and made very yummy donuts.
Texas Donuts
1208 Holliday St
Wichita Falls, TX 76301

This year on our way to Texas for Christmas I made Texas Donuts one of my targets with the new Nav system.  (Yes of course we've transferred the address to every new car since the first Rav4.) We were making regular stop and stretch your legs breaks and Wichita Falls made a good stop.  The donuts were just as good as we remembered.

I've been working in my life with the concept of scarcity = specialness.  If you have popcorn all of the time it no longer keeps it's cachet as special.  The same can be said of a lot of food in our modern world.  We lose our wonder at the deliciousness of a strawberry in part because of its abundance.  Another aspect of our modern world that I feel we lose connection with is the turn of the seasons.  Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter, all blur together in our heated/air conditioned offices/cars/homes.  Yes we might change some of our clothes, add a coat or swimsuit but our day to day living is still so much of a sameness.

Shanna with the new Hybrid Highlander aka Macleod 

I have added those two concepts together and have for the past bunch of years worked to move what I eat to the appropriate season. This is easiest to do with fruit. Strawberries are May and peaches August, grapefruit in the winter and apples in the fall.  It isn't that these fruits are available here because of Idaho's growing season, but because they are available fresh and flavorful at that time from the farmers far and near.  Yes I prefer to get fruit from Farmers Markets & Stands, but that's not possible in the winter and I need that fruit.  I'm also finding over the years that this concept of food for a season really works.  I crave stews, chili, soup, and oven fresh bread in the fall and winter.  Hamburgers, pasta salad, lemonade are summer foods, and quiche one for spring.   By making these choices I make the food more important to the season and to me.  They become treats again.  Those first May strawberries that taste of early summer are delicious and delight my soul as much as my taste buds.  August peaches which my daughter finds amusing as I spread them out on the counter as a number-line from most ripe to least ripe are a celebration of the hot summer and beginning of school.

So what does this have to do with donuts?  Well, what if the only donuts I will eat come from that shop in Wichita Falls TX?  Since they are the best donuts why would I eat any others?  Maybe I find a few other such places where I only go once a year.  Maybe I enhance my enjoyment and reduce my overall caloric load by only eating donuts at such places.   Something to think about?  Definitely.

I did think about this when I saw the email last week announcing that someone had brought donuts in to work.   I remembered the yumminess of cream filled maple bars from Texas and decided that today I could give a pass to the ones in the break area.  Apparently I'm saving my donuts not to a specific season, but to a location.

-- Jenny