A Donut for These Trying Times

Sometimes you just need a donut.

It’s been a long week for all sorts of reasons, and in times like these often the only solution is a tasty snack, preferably one that is round and sweet and contains far too much sugar for regular consumption but which, in these trying times, is just the right amount.

Also, chocolate. And custard. Sometimes both at once.

After dinner tonight Lauren and I headed out on a road trip – a 45-minute drive to the best donuts in southern Wisconsin, or at least that’s how they were described to us. This turned out to be true enough that we’re just going to call it confirmed. There’s another donut shop not far from there that makes the same claim and to be honest their donuts are very good as well, but their donuts are Artisanal Donuts with bright primary and secondary colors, innovative flavors, and mounds of frosting. The place we went to just makes donuts – the sorts of donuts you see every day, only better. On the whole, I’ll stick with this place.

You know you live in the midwest when driving 45 minutes each way to get donuts seems like a reasonable thing to do.

We parked in front of the donut shop in a spot that might or might not have been legal – I read the two vaguely supplementary signs bolted onto the pole next to where we parked probably five times each and even now I couldn’t tell you whether I was allowed to park there – and walked in. We were the only people in the shop other than the guy behind the counter.

We were surrounded by donuts – the sort of donuts that you know were actually baked there, by people who love donuts as ends in themselves, not brought in frozen from some factory in Ohio and reheated by people who see donuts as the means to making enough money to do something else with their lives – and we made short work of choosing. We got a dozen donuts, which is probably more than the three of us currently living at home can eat but a) we’re going to give it the old college try and b) sometimes you just have to say “the hell with it” and get the dozen. Also c) we can easily find volunteers for the ones we can’t eat. Lauren has friends who are teenaged males, after all. At that age I probably could have inhaled the entire dozen at a sitting without slowing down or gaining weight. It’s a fun age.

And then we drove home, happily discussing our donuts and other important topics of the day. Total elapsed time in the bakery: 6 minutes. Total drive time: 90 minutes. Total satisfaction: yes.

I may or may not sleep at all tonight.

Worth it.