Donuts, Spudnuts and Fried Biscuits

Every year when we took our summer trip to Spring Creek, we would stop in Gunnison so Mama could grocery shop before we went up to the cabins.  When Paul and I were young and under foot, we would drop Mama off at the store and Daddy would take us to a bakery on Main Street for a donut.  Daddy loved donuts. On a lovely, sunny, cool day in July, the three of us ate sugar covered donuts, not those icky glazed ones, while sitting on the curb of Main Street in downtown Gunnison.  We marveled at the little stream of water that flowed behind us in a trough built into the sidewalk...we don't have irrigation ditches in Texas that I'm aware of. We would take our time and stretch our legs after being in the car for many hours and Daddy would always have some great stories or little bits of trivia that would entertain us while we wandered around up and down the sidewalks. At some point, we would go find Mama and load up the back seat with groceries and continue on to Spring Creek.

On the way home from Spring Creek, we always stopped in Alamosa, Colorado for gas.  Right next to the station was a donut shop called "Spudnuts". This area is known for growing potatoes, so the donuts at this shop were made from potato flour aka "spud" flour, hence the name.  I'm not sure that the donuts themselves were any better than any other freshly made donut...but then again, have you ever had a bad donut?  Fried dough with sugar...how bad can that be?


With that concept in mind, I still make donuts at home by using a Coke bottle to cut a hole in cheap canned biscuits and then frying them up in my iron skillet.  The donuts are then shaken in a bag of powdered sugar, granulated sugar or sugar and cinnamon.  You can't help but eat them when they are too hot and they burn your tongue.