When my dad was growing up, his mother always told him to eat his bread crusts, because it would give him curly hair. Since he wanted curly hair, he followed her advice. For that reason alone, he ate his crusts.
By the time I was old enough to eat toast, I loved bread crust and my dad was an engineer. He knew that bread crust didn’t give you curly hair, but he couldn’t resist telling me a thing or two. What did he tell me? “You do not eat the holes of doughnuts.”
One day our family all got together, aunts, uncles, and cousins at grandma’s house. It was going to be a big doughnut-making-and-eating party. Grandma mixed and kneaded the dough, then she rolled it out. As the doughnuts began to take shape, my little cousins and I became more excited. We were all over the kitchen, under foot and scatted everywhere. Then Grandma cut the dough for each one with a special cutter. It was round with another round cutter at the center. She
cut out several on the counter and set them aside. At this, she scolded all the cousins slightly and told us to stay at the door to the kitchen so we wouldn’t get burned by the oil that was heating up on the stove.
Grandma directed one of my aunts to plunge the donuts into the deep pan of hot oil on the stove. They began to sputter and pop immediately. And the bubbling only got louder as more were put in the scalding oil. After a few minutes, another aunt was stationed over the pan of oil with a pair of tongs in hand. Grandma indicated the exact moment when a donut was ready to be taken out. As it was taken out of the hot oil, it still sizzled as oil dripped from it. It was golden brown and perfect. We cousins were still watching from the door way of the kitchen, but every so often, one of us couldn’t resist the temptation to go up to the table where the donuts were being placed to cool and ask for one to eat. Another aunt would give a mild rebuke and that child would go back to being relegated to watch once more from the kitchen door way.
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