ding dongs and donnettes

one must prepare for the first race of the season correctly. this could perhaps include a night trip to 7/11.

now, i am still kinda mad at 7/11 for never writing back to my most excellent letter about the slurpy incident. but we were walking home and wanted to get dessert, and the option was 7/11 or whole foods, and 7/11 seemed like the more logical choice.

there is a wide selection of sweet treats at 7/11. this includes, but is not limited to: candy bars, slurpies, and a wide variety of hostess and generic cake-like snacks.

let me review hostess snacks.

• fruit pies: those cherry or apple pie gooie things...to ones that look a bit more questionable filled with chocolate pudding. the cherry one is quite yummy and good on long rides. although it has been known to get wiped all over my face, which can be both endearing or gross, depending on how you look at me.
  
• the chocolate cake filled with cream variety. these include hohos, ding dongs, cupcakes, suzy q's. all the same, just with different packaging. chocolate cake, cream, dipped in chocolate. now, let me just say, i always preferred the little debbie cakes, to the hostess. the little debbie swiss roll is far, far superior to hostess ho hos. unfortuantely, little debbie does not sell singles (like hostess does) in gas stations and 7/11s. it is a shame, really, because little debbie would certainly have a corner on the market, because they are far superior in quality.
  
• twinkies and snowballs. not a huge fan of these, but they should be included, as they are classics.
• donnettes. in my opinion, donnettes are really the hostess product worth buying. this goes for both the ones dipped in chocolate and the ones covered in powder sugar.

now, how did i get on the dissertation of hostess snacks?

oh yes, what i did the day before my first race of the year.

stopped at 7/11 for a late night treat, and i picked up the hostess cupcakes, and my boyfriend got the donnettes. actually, he didn't get the donnettes, he picked up the generic 7/11 version of donnettes, of the glazed variety, and they were nasty. soggy and nasty. and speaking of nasty, my hostess cupcake was not good either. hostess really needs to work on their chocolate cake/cream snacks, and should take a lesson from little debbie, in my humble opinion. i did a quick google, and found this awesome blog, that confirms my core belief over and over, that in fact little debbie is better than hostess. (this blog is pretty interesting, because does comparative taste testing of pre-packaged snacks). why, little debbie, i ask again, don't you wrap and sell individual packages?

anyway, the short of it was the late night dessert run was pretty much a big disappointment.

so fast forward to cal aggie criterium. let's see, i'll give the couple of sentence obligatory race report. [start] the race started. i missed my foot clipping in. an attack went off in the first lap or two and two girls got away. i decided to try and bridge across. except then i hung out all alone for over a lap and thought i was going to die. then two girls blew past and i almost got myself dropped, but by the grace of god i latched on we then had a group of five for the rest of the race. i kept thinking: why are criteriums so long? then it was the last lap and i was lame in the last turn, fa la la la la. [end obligatory race report]


so after the race we stop at the gas station and michael says: "can i have $2" and in he goes, and out he comes with some donnettes (of the good variety) and some ding dongs.

hostess ding dongs look myseriously like hostess cupcakes. please observe:

hostess cupcake

hostess ding dong

to me, the only difference appears to the white swirly pattern on the top. hmmmmm.

anyway, are hostess ding dongs just as gross as the cupcakes? i don't know. i decided not to partake, despite post-race hunger. the night before was such a disappointment, i couldn't handle it again. i did, though, eat some of the donnettes, even though i know he intended to eat all the donnettes and for me to eat the ding dongs. we did not discuss this, i just knew his intent, and decided independently to eat some of his donnettes.

so what is the result of the hostess splurge two days in a row?

let me tell you. it involves stopping at the "produce market" in dixon on the way home-- where the excellent deals are advertised on the billboards.... and then somehow spending FIFTY EIGHT DOLLARS on produce...and those stupid wasabi peas i just had to have. unfortunately my prize from the crit was a "one free drink of choice" coupon at peet's, so i can't even deduct prize winning from the shopping spree to make me feel better (i.e. effectively saying i only spent $48 or $38 on groceries).

lesson learned, don't just eat 3 donnettes after a race and then go grocery shopping.