Donuts. 'Nuff Said.

Getting up early on Saturday mornings was fairly normal when I was a little girl. I seriously hated vacating my warm bed (still do), but Saturday meant Dad was home and we could have some "us" time, just the two of us. We'd get up before the sun and take his gray F-150 into town, first stopping to pick up a newspaper at the gas station and then heading over to the old donut shop.

For the record, this was decidedly not Krispy Kreme. No gleaming conveyer belts and white counters and whatnot. Think smaller. More dilapidated. Er...dirtier. But it was wonderful.

There was something overwhelmingly comfortable about the shop. It was always warm inside. The tables were cracked and rickety, perpetually manned by retirees smoking cigarettes (yeah, this was before public smoking bans) and drinking coffee, and the air was always sweet and heady from the mix of donut glaze and cigarette smoke. The lady behind the counter (I don't know what her name was, but in my memory she definitely has the look of a Thelma or Mable) always smiled and chatted with Dad while I read the cartoon taped to the cash register--a newspaper cutout with a little naked cupid spouting pithy observations about life and love.

Dad would buy me strawberry-glazed donuts (SO good), and we'd take our breakfast and the Saturday newspaper out to the truck, where we sat circling garage sale ads with the stub of a pencil from the glove box.

All this to say that: (a) donuts hold a special place in my heart, and (b) I miss eating them. Ah, for the days of being 5 years old and not thinking for a second about the calorie content and artery-clogging effects of all the grease. (Sigh.)

Now, these donuts...

...made with my handy-dandy new donut pans (for which I paid a mere $5; thank you very much, Cost Plus World Market), are a much healthier (baked, not fried), more grownup version. And while they may not be exactly the same thing, they're pretty durned good...and bring back some good memories.