The Newsletter #24: Canadian Chaos Smoothie (Patreon)

Hello everyone,

John here. I do hope you are keeping well and staying sane as we continue on our journey through this time of quarantine and self-isolation (unless your governor is a moron) together. In British Columbia we are opening the province back up on a very minimal basis next weekend (gatherings of 2-6 people, extended family, some openings of services) and a lot of citizens are (rightly) concerned about this, despite the fact that we have the lowest number of COVID cases among any state, province, or European country. Then I see pictures of people in Florida sucking off their boat exhaust in the name of freedom and I wonder how long we’re really gonna be at this. Probably a long time. Ah well, who needs to be depressed with any of this information. I hope you’re doing fine, and United Airways has organized a flyby of your neighborhood in the name of peace.

On this week’s episode of the show, for some reason, I agreed to drink a Canadian version of Ben Bartch’s chaos smoothie that he debuted in the lead-up to the NFL Draft. Ben Bartch weighs 305 lbs., and apparently every day, he eats a smoothie consisting of:

• —seven scrambled eggs
• grits
• cottage cheese
• a banana
• peanut butter
• red Gatorade

He did this to gain weight. I am a 34 year-old man who has gained roughly 15 pounds over my in-my-20’s cruising weight in the last 4 years and usually tip the scales somewhere around 195 lbs. I am actively trying not to gain weight. I’m also Canadian, and I hate eggs. Along with Molly Lambert, we designed the following smoothie on the show this week:

• —12 Timbits
• maple syrup
• cheese curds
• mini Coffee Crisps
• a banana
• Sidney Crosby’s Formula 87 Gatorade/Beaver Buzz

Oh good, I just gagged while typing that. It has been added to our “Goals” section at $8799 (in tribute to our nation’s son, Sidney Crosby, and our nation’s father, Wayne Gretzky), so I guess that means I am doing it. They don’t make Formula 87 Gatorade anymore (which is too bad, because it was rightly delicious), so I’m probably going to have to throw some Beaver Buzz in there.

For those who don’t know, Beaver Buzz is a Canadian energy drink that’s based in Western Canada, and at its peak, was selling $600,000 worth of energy drinks a month. Not too bad. It’s fallen off a bit since its (and energy drinks in general) peak in the late aughts, but is still running strong with cool flavours like “Saskatoon Berry”, which Americans should know is a real berry. Some people replied to our tweet about Beaver Buzz laughing at Saskatoon Berry like it was made up, or something. It’s real. It looks like a blueberry but has a kind of sweet, apple-like flavour to it. They’re really good. Saskatoon Berry pie is especially great.

However, that’s not my favourite flavour of Beaver Buzz**. No, that title belongs to a flavour they just call “Pink Energy”. As we all know, energy drinks are the domain of men exclusively (only gender stupid enough to consume), and we know that ladiezzzzz are scared off by the menacing beaver on the can. So what do we do? We slap grapefruit in a non-descript pink can, throw a lipstick kiss outline on there so women know it’s safe to drink, and we’re off the races, baby! It's PREMIUM! For the VIP LADIES!

(This flavour has since been discontinued.)

This project also got me thinking: which Timbit is best? If you’re unfamiliar with Timbits, you may know them by their much sexier name, doughnut holes. Timbits are Canada’s answer to “what do they do with the middle of a donut?” and like all Tim Hortons product, they used to be much better. Tim Hortons used to bake their donuts fresh, in-house every day, and they used to be pretty darn good, in fact. Now they’re all shipped to stores frozen, including Timbits, and they just aren’t that good anymore. Timbits still retain some of their charm (and the convenience of eating 2-3 in a sitting can’t be beat), but not all flavours are created equal. Here is my ranking of all 13 readily-available Timbit flavours here in Canada, along with a very brief review.

13. Old-Fashioned Plain

I have no idea who this donut is for. This donut tastes like something you would’ve been fed in a Great Depression bread line as a treat. It’s impossible to imagine why they still make it, and is found at the bottom of every single assorted box as people would rather NOT EAT A DONUT than eat this one.

12. Toasted Coconut/Chocolate Coconut

I wrapped two flavours into one here because they both suck shit because the coconut is just absolutely awful on these things. I love coconut, massive fan, and this is an affront to coconuts everywhere. It tastes like shredded packing peanuts, frozen and reheated.

11. Old-Fashioned Glaze

This tastes like it was made just after the Great Depression, where people could obtain sugar again, but they were so excited about getting the sugar again that they weren’t sure what to do with it, so they boiled it down and dumped it into a box of their finest (worst) donuts.

10. Salted Caramel

To call this “salted caramel” insinuates that salt and/or caramel would’ve been involved in the making of this donut, but instead it just tastes like someone poured sticky sugar syrup on a donut and then sent you a letter with the word “caramel” written on it that you were reading at the time you ate the donut. This is a very convoluted metaphor but salted caramel has become a bit of a touchstone of highfalutin flavours and this could possibly be the worst example of it. This is the Britney Spears comeback album of Timbits.

9. Blueberry

This CAN be a good Timbit, as it’s a regular cake donut with some blueberries inside and a glaze on the outside. The problem with this Timbit is that it is constructed by a moron inside a packing facility some thousands of kilometers away from the donut shop you’re going to buy and consume it in, and so many of them don’t get much glaze on it and taste like a blueberry bagel with sugar added and wait a minute, are these actually bagel holes?

8. Honey Cruller

You will see another honey Timbit appear a bit higher on this list, but I’m just not a huge fan of the cruller style of donut. I believe the appeal of the cruller is its crispy/flaky texture in relation to other donuts, however that is completely lost when the size of the donut is shrunken down to the size of a Timbit. It’s a baffling product decision, especially with another great honey option available.

7. Apple Fritter

Same thing applies to the fritter as to the cruller, as you lose a lot of the texture that would make this donut potentially good. Instead, this just tastes like an old-fashioned glaze with the smell of an apple orchard 5 blocks away from you floating downwind into your nostrils as you consume it.

6. Lemon-Filled

Ok, this is the first Timbit on the list I actively enjoy. Your mileage will vary based on what you think of lemon, but lemon-based desserts are among my absolute favourite, so this is up there for me. Texture-wise, the filling is somewhere in between custard and jelly, and it hits a sweet spot with a nice sour kick. 

5. Chocolate Glazed

Every child’s favourite Timbit and the one that tends to disappear first out of any box, the chocolate glazed has likely been the hardest hit by the switch to frozen products. As a kid, this was a delectable treat, chocolate cake in bite-size form, a perfect amount of glaze. It was the undisputed Timbit champion. But it’s hard to freeze chocolate cake, and the drying out of this flavour has been its biggest downfall. It still tastes ok, but its glory days, much like the rest of us, are behind it.

4. Jelly Filled (Strawberry/Raspberry)

I love a good jelly-filled donut. Some people hate it, and that’s completely fine. If you do, move this down your list appropriately. This is one of the few Timbits that actually gained from the switch to frozen products. Not that it tastes better, because it does not, but getting the splash of jelly in the middle gives the donut a kind of fresh-feeling taste that the other donuts do not have, which makes it stand out. I prefer the raspberry too, it’s available less often and has a nice sour bite to it.

3. Honey Dip

This is just an extremely satisfying donut to eat, one of the few Timbits that tastes like actually eating a bite-sized version of a donut. And honey dips are what Timbits were made for, as eating an entire honey dip donut is far too sweet. But a little bite-sized version? Now that’s heaven. Tim Hortons uses a different dough for this one than any of the others as well that’s far less dense and has a bit of an airy quality to it. A tremendous donut in the genre.

2. Sour Cream Glazed

Where a honey dip is light and airy, this is a dense bomb of flavour, Tim Hortons almost daring you to make a cake donut more thiccccc than this one. Sour Cream feels like a very adult flavour of donut, something a child’s palate wouldn’t even recognize. There’s a sophistication to it that only adds to the quality of the donut itself, a unique flavour in a sweet world. You can’t really describe how a sour cream glaze tastes, or why it even tastes good, but it does and it’s delicious.

1. Birthday Cake

This is Tim Hortons’ newest Timbit, and for once, they did not fuck this up. Almost all of the other Timbits on this list have existed for decades—blueberry is technically a “new” flavour, but it RE-debuted in 2018 and was a previous classic before being taken off the menu for a while—but birthday cake was launched in 2014 to celebrate the company’s 50th anniversary. While intended to be a limited release, it’s now so beloved they used the flavour to launch a breakfast cereal line just this year. It’s everything a Timbit should be, relying on the small size to overload on sweetness, tasting like a glazed version of the “Rainbow Chip” Betty Crocker cakes you used to eat as a kid. It’s perfection, and makes me wonder why every Timbit they’ve rolled out since—Pumpkin Spice, a few other caramel things, etc.—suck ass. This shouldn’t be hard.

I hope my smoothie has only birthday cake timbits in it.

Love,
John.

** - I have never had Beaver Buzz. Hell, I haven't had an energy drink since 2004.