...Really. It's a real holiday according to DH's calendar program. It prints out on our monthly calendar for June every year. And no, this won't be laden with cop and doughnut shop jokes. The cops I know frequent bagel shops and the local Baja Fresh, and cop with bagel or tortilla jokes just don't go as far as the doughnut ones.

But I digress.

This year I decided to go find out what exactly *is* Doughnuts Day. In searching the web (once again, Google is a wonderful thing, but...) there are lots of references to doughnuts and day, but not necessarily in the way that I want them joined. They're joined too, but again, not in the way that I wanted.

So I searched on the invention of doughnuts, and received a very handy link from Mr. Breakfast. I kid you not, folks, there really is a Mr. Breakfast, and he wrote a very intresting article about the invention of the doughnut (which can be found here).

Apparently doughnuts have been around for years upon years - they were called olykoeks (oily cakes) in Holland before coming to America and they were a little bit different. Olykoeks were sweet dough balls that were plopped into port fat to be fried, and the solid center was usually undercooked.

In 1874, in America, Elizabeth Gregory made excellent olykoeks and she solved the issue of the undercooked center by filling the center with nuts and a touch of nutmeg - thus, the name dough-nuts. According to another source that I found yesterday but can't at the moment, today is the date attributed to that discovery. The rest of Mr. Breakfast's article has to do with how the doughnut allegedly got it's hole in the center, and that's a matter of debate for the centuries.

Truthfully, we may never know. Honestly, do we really care?

Doughnuts have grown from a homemade treat into a $3.6 Billion industry that was one of the larger growth sectors in the food industry in 2003 (according to an article in USA Today from 2003. We love them plain glazed, cake style, stuffed with jelly or custard... as long as we have them. They're clearly not a health food - especially when you consider that they have as much as 25% fat in them - mostly from the frying process.

But they're usually cheap (even the really good ones are inexpensive) and they're great with coffee or tea or to eat quickly on the way to a meeting (or in a meeting). They're a quick artificial energy push (with all that sugar in them) when we think we need one. They appeal as comfort food, and as a quick treat on a busy day. I told a buddy here at work that today was Doughnuts Day (he's usually responsible for those wonderful fat sponges coming into the office) and he was pretty sure that we couldn't let the opportunity pass. So, with that, you should enjoy your day, whether or not you have a doughnut in hand to celebrate this auspicious occasion...

... and I'll enjoy mine. *happily turns back to her Assam tea and a custard filled, chocolate glazed Krispy Kreme*