All members of the Armed Forces are required to maintain standards of physical readiness—including chaplains. Every year we have to weigh in and pass our Body Composition Assessment (BCA) and Physical Readiness Test (PRT). Even when deployed aboard ship commands are expected to conduct these assessments. Even though COVID prevented us from conducting our PRT, we were still given a BCA as a “courtesy” to remind us that we were still expected to maintain standards. What a delicious irony it was to discover that the day scheduled for weigh-ins also happened to be the birthday of the donut. Hence the following story and prayer.
An inventive Sailor’s priceless contribution to mankind.
For the past week or so we’ve all had to do our so-called “courtesy” BCAs. I had mine done today and was pleased to find that my attempts at losing some weight and getting back into shape during the deployment have not been altogether unsuccessful. But the irony of weighing in today is that on this date in 1847, the modern donut was invented.
Captain Hansen Gregory recalled how he invented the donut when he was a 16-year-old crewman aboard the schooner Isaac Achorn out of Maine. Fried dough was nothing new, his mother had been sending him to sea with her own cakes since he was 13. But in those days, said Gregory, they cut the dough into diamond shapes or thin strips that were doubled then twisted together before they were fried. This often had the unfortunate result of making the edges crispy with the center still raw dough, or, in the case of the twister, the grease would get sopped up into the places where they bent. Neither situation was good for a sailor’s digestion.
So, like any good sailor does, Gregory started looking for a solution, a better way to fry his dough. Wondering if removing the center would solve the problem, he tried rolling the dough into a long piece and joining the ends to make a circle, but that didn’t work. Finally, he said he “took the cover off the ship’s tin pepper box and…cut into the middle of that doughnut the first hole ever seen by mortal eyes.” He also clearly had a sailor’s gift of exaggerating his sea stories, especially when he went on to say that “them doughnuts was the finest [he] ever tasted. No more indigestion, no more greasy sinkers, but just well-done, fried-through doughnuts.”
He brought his idea home to his mother, who used her own recipe for dough and her son’s idea of cutting out the centers before frying to make a few trays of donuts to sell in the store over in Rockland, Maine, and the rest is history. American-style donuts are now sold all over the world, all because a Sailor was tired of doughy, greasy fried cakes and did something about it.
Happy Birthday, Donut, I miss you when I’m getting ready for PRTs.
LET US PRAY
Heavenly Father, You have given us many things that are capable of giving us joy. Help us to remember that they only continue to do so if we enjoy them in moderation. A favored snack or beverage, a hobby or pastime, anything we consume or use can easily become our master if we over-indulge. Teach us that what You have given us is to be shared with others generously rather than hoarded selfishly, and it is in the giving and sharing that we find the deepest, most enduring joy. For You are a generous God who gives us everything, and to You we give thanksgiving always, now and forever, and to the ages of ages.
AMEN
An Orthodox Priest Abroad 