Off to Florida to see Mr. and Mrs. Blognut-in-law. Back Sunday with grouper sandwiches - hopefully fried - and tales from Yummies redux. And word has it there’s Cuban on the horizon.

On Sunday we met up with MP and SP for brunch at Diner. We showed up at the very sitable hour of 12:30, when everyone else in Williamsburg, Brooklyn is still sleeping off hipster vices and/or trying to squeeze into tapered pants.

I’d been to Diner for dinner a while back but all I remembered was waiters writing all the specials on paper table cloths, a practice which takes an awkwardly long time and should really be replaced by just talking. Though I have to give them credit for their penmanship, which is oddly good given the pressured situation.

But the most deserved nod goes to Diner’s brunch menu, which offers not one, but two!! of my three favorite foods - pulled pork and Donuts. The third position cycles through a revolving cast of characters which at any given time can include pizza, hamburgers or sandwiches – assuming you’re not one of those perplexing people who consider a hamburger a type of sandwich, in which case just lump the two together as one category.

The pulled pork was decent. Not smoky or authentic tasting, but nice and porky and resting on a bed of perfectly buttery grits. It was supposed to come topped with eggs sunny side up, which in my pre-coffee delirium, I requested be replaced with mashed potatoes when I meant to say scrambled eggs. When I tried to correct myself, the waiter was like, “I know what you meant,” and brought me eggs over easy.

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So far ‘08 has been all about The Doughnut Plant’s Meyer Lemon series. And by “series” I mean glazed and cake. They’re both made of the DP’s standard issue doughs and have the natural, fresh tartness of the real lemon-orange hybrid. Here’s a few shots of the meyer lemons Mrs. B and I enjoyed on her 28th birthday a few weeks ago. And by “Mrs. B and I,” I really just mean “I”, because we have this routine on holidays and birthdays where I buy Donuts and say they’re for her, knowing full well she doesn’t actually like Donuts that much and I’ll get to eat them. But it’s still kind of her present. Everyone wins.

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A new book searches for Canadian identity in the form of a Donut. Author Steve Penfold argues that while Canada originally co-opted the Donut from the US, it has since become a national icon as symbolic as the maple leaf, hockey, beer and hosers.

Penfold attributes the Donut’s rise to Canadian renown to a need for national identity, hockey player Tim Horton and something to do with constitutional debates in the 1980s. But his overall point seems to be that Canadians appreciate the Donut more so than us Americans, and thus the Donut is theirs, not ours. A questionable thesis for sure, but I can definitely attest to their obsession given the ridiculous number of Donut shops – both indie and corporate – in and around Toronto.

For a much better description of The Donut, check out this review in the Toronto Star, which incidentally discusses something called “beaver tails” – or “queues de castor” in whatever language Canadians speak – which are not actually beaver tails, but more like Donuts. Report forthcoming.

The Donut: A Canadian History, by Steve Penfold, University of Toronto Press, 248 pages, $24.95.

As an accompaniment to the popular Blognut series, Celebrities Caught Thinking About Donuts, in which primarily B-list celebrities are caught in the act of thinking about Donuts, we’d like to unveil a new series entitled Celebrities Who’ve Just Sat On A Donut. It’s pretty self-explanatory so we’ll kick things off with B-list celebrity James Lipton shortly after unintentionally sitting on a Donut.

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Not sure how I missed this, but this past November, Lower East Side Donut artisan Mark Israel opened a branch of his renowned Doughnut Plant in Seoul, Korea. Which I know seems weird but when considering he’s already got 10 DPs in Tokyo it makes perfect sense: Asian Donut occupation - China watch out! And thanks to Superlocal for the pic.

And I’m glad Mark embraced the tendency for Eastern Donuts to look cartoonish. Witness cartoon-like Asian Donuts:

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It’s the week of Spudnuts coverage!

Check out two great write-ups of my all-time favorite Donut shop. First, food-blogger extraordinaire/Serious Eats contributor The Girl Who Ate Everything romps around Charlottesville eating Donuts and jumping a lot. And next up, Charlottesville blog cVillain pays a visit

NYMag reports that Dunkin’ Donuts spokeswoman/Food Network star Rachael Ray actually hates Dunkin’ coffee.

Which is fine and all, but when “What is this sh*t? Get me MY coffee,” refers to Starbucks, it just doesn’t make any sense. Cuz Bucks kind of tastes like putting your tongue on a Duracell. And incidentally, Rachael’s show 30 Minute Meals is filmed at the Food Network studios in Chelsea Market, which also happens to house Ninth Street Espresso, which is probably the best coffee shop in New York.

To my knowledge this is the first ever combination of Donuts and poultry.

“It’s really very European. Locally-grown ingredients — Hanover tomatoes and whatever else is at the Farmers’ Market that week — are the norm. And Emerson’s quirky menu items include a turkey, onion, goat cheese and pistachio sandwich served on a glazed Donut.”

Thanks to expert Charlottesvillian Web designers/movie makers M & M for tipping me to the turkey Donut sandwich.

Friend of Blognut returns with Yo La Tengo’s thoughts on Donuts.

Friend of Blognut recently attended The Freewheelin’ Yo La Tengo, a show in bassist James McNew’s former hometown and home of Spudnuts, Charlottesville, Virginia. The format was seated audience, chatting bandmembers, Q&A encouraged. FOB asked the question that was surely on everyone’s mind:

FOB: Favorite donut?

Ira Kaplan (guitar): [puzzled] Donuts? Hmm, I don’t really eat donuts.

Georgia Hubley (drums): [deadpan] I like whole wheat glazed. Whole wheat glazed.

Ira: [admiringly] That’s a classy choice, a classy donut.

James McNew (bass): [happily] Donuts? They’re donuts, they’re all good. It’s still a donut. How can you have a bad donut??

Ira: [skeptically] But why would you have a donut when you could have a chocolate chip cookie?

A little bit later, someone asked a complicated question about references to/in Kinks songs and Ira tried to answer for a bit and then asked “Don’t you want to know something about donuts?”