On Pouches and Doom

Tomorrow is the last Tour de Donut. Sure, there will be a grand championship round which will put Cider Belly against Terrace Mountain and the winner of this Wild Card tour. However, if you want to caravan across the Capital Region by car on a fall day, to eat five difference cider donuts with the FLB crew, Saturday may be your last day to do that.

Which isn’t to say the FLB tours are coming to an end, but the Tour de Donut has run its course.

This year’s tour will end at Saratoga Apple, which will put us an easy drive to Glens Falls. And this weekend Glens Falls is hosting the Adirondack Film Festival. I know this because Yelp is one of the sponsors. I’ve been told downtown Glens Falls is really thriving these days, so I’m looking forward to seeing it on Saturday after the tour.

Driving all around the Capital Region to sample five different donuts surely is not consistent with a drive to limit one’s carbon footprint. But I’m going to do it anyway. I will be bringing Little Miss Fussy along, so it’s not like I’ll be driving solo. And we’ll try to get some errands done before we return home too. Plus, I drive a Mazda5 which while it may look like a minivan is based on the Mazda3 platform, so it gets the fuel economy of a small car.

As long as we’re confessing the small things we do that will lead to our eventual doom, maybe this is a good time to talk about convenience foods.

For years I decried giving pouches of “food” to kids.

There are so many reasons to avoid these foul conveniences. Perhaps the most obvious one is the environmental disaster of single serve foodstuffs, with all their packaging and the waste they produce.

There’s the idea that it’s important to teach your kids about food, and part of that involves the physical act of eating, versus sucking calories through a tube. That also includes the sensual pleasures of experiencing how your food looks and smells, which are entirely absent when pouches are involved.

Pouches are typically packed with sugar, and while they may be marketed as healthful, they rarely are. Not to mention the fact that it’s important to take time out of one’s day to eat. The idea of pouches is that you can just suck and go. It’s food on the run, if you can even count it as food at all.

Then one of my kids got braces, and that changed the game.

When braces get tightened, it can hurt to eat and chew for days. And kids go to school, where lunches don’t get refrigeration. And calories are needed during those school hours. So, all of a sudden, these pouches came into our lives.

The ones we buy are the GoGo Squeez Yogurtz. They are sweetened with cane sugar, are made with milk from cows that weren’t treated with hormones, and contain only natural flavors. Which satisfies a lot of my crazy. The pouches are also BPA free. And it’s a product of France. Which means, it’s even worse for the environment since they need to be shipped across an ocean. But so does my coffee and tea, and I’ve got no plans on giving those up any time soon.

My hope is that once the braces are done, we can walk away from pouches again. Because right now it’s killing me that these have become a staple in the Fussy home. But braces are on for years. And we’ve got two kids.

I may just need to make peace with these convenience foods for now. As far as other convenience foods, we’ll tackle those another time.

Or, you know, we can talk about it in person on the Tour de Donut tomorrow. If you do decide to come, please let me know so I can make sure to have enough scoresheets. Hope to see you soon. But if not, have a great weekend.