A few weeks back, my grandmother turned 110. Well, she would have if she hadn't died 25 years ago.
In any case, I have about a dozen cousins scattered across the country, and we exchange e-mails in sort of a random ricochet, covering everything from family memories to Iraq and, yes, even the Ten Commandments.
But back to my Grandma Elsie. When I was a child, my parents would celebrate their summer vacation from parenting by shipping my sister and me off to grandma's for a week.
We loved to go because grandma, as most grandmas do, spoiled us rotten. For example, at home, the sweetest thing we ever had to drink was Kool-Aid. At grandma's, however, a kid could get orange or strawberry soda.
Grandma also was a woman of her generation, which is to say that she genuinely believed a woman's place was in the kitchen. When she wasn't cooking a meal, she was baking treats.
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So it was that a few weeks ago, when grandma turned 110, I e-mailed my cousins that I thought I would go have a doughnut in honor of our grandma. They immediately agreed that was the perfect way to remember her.
While grandma was a diversified baker, in that she regularly produced cakes and cookies, those items came and went. However, a kid could always get a doughnut at grandma's house. She had a big tin canister, at least 12 inches in diameter, and it always had doughnuts in it.
The doughnuts were unadorned. That is, they weren't frosted or dipped in cinnamon or sugar. They were just circles of dough fried in deep fat. They didn't rot your teeth, but they may have plugged a few capillaries.
I can remember countless family gatherings where the adults sat around the kitchen table having a cup of coffee and the kids sat around having orange soda and everybody sat around having one of grandma's doughnuts.
Being a semi-adult, I've pretty much grown out of the orange soda phase, but not quite reached the coffee phase. However, it seemed like a cup of coffee and a doughnut would be the perfect way to remember grandma.
So I set off for a nearby coffee emporium. Only one problem. It didn't have any doughnuts. Nor did the next one. Or the one after that. Apparently, coffee houses are too upscale to contend with the lowly doughnut. You can get cookies or rolls, or -- are we uppity or what -- a scone. But no doughnuts.
If you want a doughnut, you have to go to a grocery store. Most of the doughnuts in a grocery store are in 12-count boxes. Those doughnuts bear about as much resemblance to grandma's doughnuts as a pineapple does to an apple.
However, I finally found a grocery store that had a sit-down deli, and, behold, it had a couple of doughnuts left over from the day before. They were dipped in sugar, so they weren't quite the same, but they served the purpose.
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Grandma never said an unkind word about anybody or anything, so she would not have compared today's doughnuts to those she made. Nor would she have raised an eyebrow over the changing tastes of Americans that created coffee shops without doughnuts. Those comparisons are left to subsequent generations.
I'm still trying to figure it all out. Can anybody out there tell me why a scone is better than a doughnut? Or for that matter, why the preference for a cookie or a roll? Is it because a doughnut is shaped to remind us what goes between the lips stays on the hips?
Or is it simply class warfare? Croissants have replaced biscuits and dinner rolls. Scones have superseded doughnuts. Bagels are gaining on bread.
I remain a person of simple tastes; just give me a doughnut like grandma used to make.
Tom West is the editor and publisher of the Budgeteer News. He may be reached by telephone at 723-1207 or by e-mail at tom.west@duluth.com .
