Donut Prince!
Nov. 4th, 2011 10:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
furtech
My apple diaries gave a friend a craving for apple fritters. She is a top-tier foodie: she even takes pictures of her food -before- she eats it. Her research pointed her to a small shop in Burbank, Donut Prince. Both of us were still riding a creative high from a conference we'd attended the previous day. So we celebrated. A lot.
The first thing I noticed was that I had driven past this place a hundred times or more in the past! This is the donut shop in the same shopping center where I bought my pin-head crickets at Scales-N-Tails (when I owned poison dart frogs).
After a nice meal at Zen Cow (aka, Zankou Chicken), we indulged in peanut-butter-filled chocolate bars, apple fritters and my two favorites: a Homer Simpson pink donut and a white-with-black-sprinkles cake. OMGAMAZING!
I love this place. I have an adoration for people who are thorough and passionate about what they create. It is clear from the apple fritter alone that the owner (an Asian immigrant) is one of those people who is determined to Get It Right. I can picture her buying this donut shop and then researching the hell out of what a "donut" is. What is this strange thing Americans like so much? And then taking it a step further by making the absolute BEST donut in the world. The apples were minced perfectly-- not too big, not too small. The seasoning was even and throughout the dough. Not too sweet, not too bland. The glaze kept the outside crisp, the inside moist and fluffy. I'm not a big fan of apple fritters, but this experience could change me!
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no subject
Date: 2011-11-07 09:04 pm (UTC)Handling them is a problem for a different reason than most people think: their skin is sensitive to oils on the human hand and they can suffer from too much handling. Domesticated dart frogs are non-poisonous. (<--surprise, eh?) They get their venom in the wild from the bugs they eat. Without those bugs they're about as poisonous as your basic tree frog.
Do your research: if you decide to get some, talk to an owner or read books because the species vary widely in temperament and behavior. Some are pretty aggressive and should not be mixed with other species; others are very gregarious and you can have a nice mix (I had bumblebee and three-stripe frogs because they get along and they both make pleasant sounds). Some are silent or make weird noises while others (like the three-stripe) make adorable sounds. Some are easy to breed (Tracy's Azureus were somewhat aggressive, but bred like crazy) while others are trickier. Oh, and get males: they make the noise!
You can actually have a dart frog vivarium that can sit on your desk (like one of those hexagonal plexiglass 2gallon tanks). If you get a species that is on the large side, you can feed them small crickets instead of the harder to find pinheads (which are just very young crickets). Fruit flies can be fed instead of pinheads, but they tend to crawl out of the tanks and make a nuisance of themselves.
Man, now I want to get another dart frog! And a -small- vivarium, easily transportable.
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Date: 2011-11-08 03:43 pm (UTC)