Idle thoughts about you-know-what

Years and years and years ago, I disentangled myself from The Worst Boyfriend in the Universe, and after he finally packed up and drove away I ate a Krispy Kreme donut. 

While I was eating the donut, I started crying--sobbing, actually. Not because I missed the bad guy, but because I was eating a Krispy Kreme donut, alone.  And then I started laughing because I was crying because I was eating a Krispy Kreme donut, alone. 

I bring it up because I've been thinking about the term "food porn," which I find particularly inappropriate. First, I just don't like those two words together. It kills my appetite. 

And second: the items that people tend to refer to as food porn--gorgeous art-directed photos of lobsters dripping with butter, cocoa nibs on a rustic burlap sack, a steak, an eggplant--are not the least bit "pornographic."  

I notice, however, that no one ever refers to pictures of, say, Pez or corn chips or a bear claw as food porn. That seems wrong. 

If we as a people are going to continue to use the term, we should use it properly, for objectionable food that makes us feel guilty, pathetic, lazy affection in spite of the fact that it could never love us back. Like the donut.

Or, for instance, the iconic Pillsbury poppin' fresh cinnamon bun (honestly: poppin' freshs buns?). 

I prepared a can this morning for a very close friend who loves them, who also gets a tremendous kick out of icing them with the stuff in that plastic container that arrives, also poppin fresh, in the the same can, and who would eat all of them if I let her. This, even though I am more than capable of making a proper cinnamon bun. I only had one bite. But I won't lie to you: fabulous.