Tanya the Art Butcher has posted an entry about homemade donuts and how ugly they are when you improvise. This brought back some fun memories.
My grandmother was a country woman. She sniffed snuff (before I was born, but still). Most people think of Copenhagen and tins of moist crumbles of tobacco when they hear snuff. But snuff started out as a sniff-able product. It looks like cinnamon - same color, same consistency and was meant to be sniffed like cocaine. This kind of snuff came in small tumblers (I think it still does, actually, just plastic tumblers). These were the glasses we kids used at my granny's. (you can see examples here).
She would roll out the donut dough on the kitchen table (a formica topped metal atrocity that is highly collectible these days, but was used to the point of falling apart) and then use a snuff glass (about 3" in diameter) to cut out the donuts. She'd grab a small pill bottle and use that to cut out the holes.
Then over to the propane stove and the cast iron skillet to fry them in hot bacon grease. Which sounds disgusting, but was actually really quite good.
5 comments:
Sounds yum to me. Homemade donuts are such a rarity these days.....
There was a time, which evidently wasn't so long ago, when the good old bucket o' bacon grease was a regular fixture by the family stove. I'm trying to imagine how it would affect the flavor of donuts and I'm drawing a blank.
The pill bottle for cutting out donut holes is a good idea!
LOL, I would hope it wasn't too long ago (that's a comment about my age).
You know you're old when you start hearing the popular music from your teen years playing as "muzac" while you're shopping - and it hasn't even received the typical "muzac" treatment.
My granny loved her pill bottles. Her quilting room (she had a huge frame that was suspended from the ceiling and could be pulled up to be out of the way) had a spare medicine cabinet full of used pill bottles. She used them to store pins, needles and seeds. Okra seeds, tomato seeds, etc.
Toddlers were given pill bottles full of buttons and beads to shake, rattle and roll.
I don't remember the donuts tasting bacon-y. Either it doesn't really impart flavor or I was used to the flavor.
The link to the snuff glasses broke. Can you find any other? My wife just brought home a dozen antique snuff glasses that are clear, about 8 oz. and are not absolutely clear, but have molded sort of facets in the glass sides. I'm trying to find an image on the Web of such, but your blog posting is the only reference I can find.
GanadoRH - I'll see what I can find.
I know what you mean about the facets - they weren't smooth at all.
Here's a decent pic - http://www.bottlebooks.com/questions/January%202005/antique-snuff%20glass.jpg
and a listing: http://stores.phintage.com/-strse-35/OLD-HEX-OPTIC-GARRETT/Detail.bok
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