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Copyright © 2009 Andrea Langworthy
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It’s State Fair time and my mind is on donuts. Perfection in the form of a warm, sugar-coated, mouth-watering orb named after Tom Thumb. I’ve never been able to limit myself to just one bagful.
Over the years, I’ve eaten my fair share of donuts. I may have eaten your share, too. Donuts are the major food group teachers fail to mention. In grade school, my friend and I walked to church on Saturday mornings. Because we’d been fasting since midnight, the minute the service ended, we ran the two blocks to the bakery on 50th Street to buy donuts for the mile-long walk home. We liked the sugared raised variety.
My dad, who couldn’t resist a new gadget, spent hours monkeying around with a counter top deep fryer until he had some recipes perfected. He dropped home cut potatoes and onions into the fryer so we could have French fries and onion rings with hamburgers. He poked a stick into a hot dog which he rolled in batter and fried just like the Pronto Pups at the Fair. But the real treat was when Dad dropped rings of dough into spattering oil, then pulled out a metal basket full of crunchy, grease-coated donuts which Mom rolled in cinnamon sugar and laid on a paper towel. Gosh, they were good!
I can’t remember how many mini-donuts my First Love and I ate during visits to the Fair in our teen-aged years. I do know we introduced our year-old daughter to the delights during her first trip to the Great Minnesota Get-together. Donuts were breakfast’s dessert for our little family many Saturday mornings. We pushed the stroller to the bakery for a sack of glazed donuts and a bottle of Coke. We’d find a grassy hill or retaining wall to sit on while we nibbled our way to the crumbs at the bottom of the bag.
It was crumble-topped donuts we fell in love with when my husband took a job transfer to New Jersey. One benefit the new company neglected to mention was Entemann’s bakery goods which were sold in all the grocery stores. Even better was Entemann’s outlet store, our new Saturday outing. The glazed old-fashioneds with crumbles on the top came six to a box. One box was never enough.
In 1976, when I began my career as a new car salesperson, I was introduced to the phenomenon known as New Car Showing. New models had been hidden from customers until the big event and were introduced with fanfare. Balloons were tied to the cars’ antennas. Throngs of people filled the showroom. They registered for drawings, received window scrapers (perfume for the ladies) and then headed to the lower show floor for food and beverages — coffee, pop and bakery donuts. Every day, my lunch was the chocolate-covered variety. Dinner, too. My record was eight in a day.
Alas, I learned about calories and fat grams and tried to limit my intake of the
no-nos to State Fair time. Then Krispy Kreme came to Minnesota and I lost all will power, even driving to Maple Grove to wait in line for boxes of the ooey-gooey goodies. By the time the franchise made its way closer to home, though, I’d had my fill.
But now I’ve learned an old friend, Dunkin´ Donuts, is making a comeback. My tummy got the news and did cartwheels. Dunkin´ Donuts — with so many varieties to choose from. Soon, the devil will be whispering in my ear that one won’t hurt me. But one is never enough, is it?