Image of Procrastination

Sometimes brilliant ideas come to us after we've been around a while and have seen something we can't forget. Or, can't forget the taste of. When for five or so months, we've been able to reason with ourselves to get it while it's good, while it's still there. To support something and put our money where our mouth is.
Something good enough that we make excuses for things we need in town, just so we can get reasonably close enough that we might as well stop, since we're in the neighborhood.

I'm talking, of course, of donuts.  Of delicious donuts not found on every grocery store shelf or known by their name across the country. I'm talking of a place called Krumpe's, which isn't pronounced krump's, like I first exclaimed. It's a more like krumpy's, and it's more like amazing.

It used to be that the things we loved we had to work for and wait until they were ready. Until they sprouted from the ground, until their buds blossomed. Like ice cream in the summer, when we have forgotten what it feels like to be cold. Like asparagus in the spring, when the shoots are so tender they can be plucked straight from the stalk and eaten in hand.

Perhaps that is why I so quickly grew to love Krumpe's donuts: I couldn't find them just anywhere at on any given whim. They were vailable when they were fresh, and that meant after 7 p.m. It also meant that I couldn't go on Saturday evening, because the donuts are made during the night, and Saturday evening is their night off to rest for Sunday morning. I was so stuck on them that sometimes I would forget that, and instead find a dimly lit drive, with its normal bustle of cars and people.

I loved the donuts because I had to drive down Donut Alley to get to them; for more than fifty years they have been on this same small street. I love them because they are melt-in-your-mouth delicious on their own, and even better with peanut butter frosting or filled with cinnamon apples.  They are still sold at the counter by clerks wearing paper deli hats, and it is probable you will see the expert donut makers so skilled at their work that you can hardly see in what direction their hands are moving. And, although I was often alone on my trips to the donut capital, I was surrounded by generations of fellow donut lovers, buying a dozen and eating half of them before they even left the parking lot. My love for these donuts is so strong that I went to the only gas station I know to sell them and happily gobbled down four day-old donuts in a twenty-minute drive. They are that good.

And, when I returned to North Carolina, one of the first stops I made was to Krispy Kreme--the reigning donut king in these parts. I went when the hot donuts sign was on, but they weren't the same. They didn't melt the same way in my mouth, and their taste was good but not you-have-to-come-back-soon extraordinary.

So, as I often do, I tried my hand at baking some. I knew I wouldn't approach the deliciousness of the Krumpe's donuts--even a health-minded fellow knows that some things are just meant to be fried--but I can't afford to run out and get Krispy Kreme every week, either. What turned out was a baked dough, similar to a healthier, sugar-coated partial whole grain pastry when straight from the oven. At room temperature, it was denser and still sweet, but not the delicicacy you'd find at a small hole-in-the-wall bakery. I'm not ready yet to take out the fryer--that can of worms is perhaps best left in western Maryland, where delicious local donuts rule supreme.

You can find the recipe for these homemade baked donuts here.