Back to Basics- It’s a Spudnut Day!

(March 14^th, 2020 -Actually known as Pi day)

What do I do on a full day at home? That is a dilemma for me. I admit it. I am an adrenalin junkie. Having had my personal battles with anxiety and depression I have developed a habit of getting out of the house every morning to kick start my day. As I heed the warnings about Covid 19 and the pandemic, I decided that it must be a “spudnut” day. “Spudnut” you say? “What in the world is a spudnut?” Spudnuts are a favorite family recipe from my childhood made on occasion by my mother. It is soft dough made into a donut with potatoes in the batter. My mother said she clipped the recipe out of the Lethbridge paper and since I was a child spudnut day became a magic day. Maybe they are a comfort food for me. Though I now live in the city, spudnuts bring me back to life on the farm as a child. 

Making spudnuts was a daylong process for my mother. It began with the cooking of the potatoes to the making of the dough, then the long wait for the dough to rise. The kitchen counters were then covered with wax paper as my mom used her special donut cutter to lay the donuts out to wait for the second rise of the dough.

As we grew older we were allowed to participate in the cutting and we made sure there were lots of donut holes left to rise not only on the wax paper but also in our tummies as we ate the raw sweet dough. My mother in her wisdom always made a huge batch so we wouldn’t have to make them again for another year. This meant 200 donuts at a time. We had a large freezer and with working full time as a teacher my mother planned ahead in case company just happened to stop by. Once the second rise was near completion my mother began to melt the lard that we had from our freezer from the pigs that we butchered, in order to fry the donuts in a large electric frying pan. This was a tedious job, as the pan would fry only a few donuts at a time. You had to control the temperature and wait for the donuts to be a perfect golden brown before turning them over so the other side would brown too.  A thin white butter icing sugar had to be prepared for once the donuts were taken out of the frying pan and left to cool a bit on a platter. Then they could be immersed in the sticky sweet icing while they were still a bit hot. The glazed donuts were suspended on long skewers to let the icing drip off while we waited with mouths watering for the first bite. Of course the icing is the best part. Pure sugar!

I remember one particular summer Spudnut day on the farm. It was as if the smell spread all across Southern Alberta. As soon as the Spudnuts were done a few of my Dad’s siblings dropped by. There were 7 in his family. Then cousins from Calgary spontaneously decided to drive to the farm. Some of the teenage boys ate 18 spudnuts at a time! There must have been over 20 of us. By the end of the day there were only half a dozen spudnuts left. My mother never complained about all that work disappearing in a few hours. She was happy that everyone loved her cooking. The kitchen was filled with talk and gregarious laughter and I still to this day remember the feeling of warmth of family that we experienced that day with the added full tummies filled with spudnuts!

As I established my own home I would periodically have a spudnut day for my family every year or two. It was fun to watch my own children look back to the day where they, like me, could hardly wait for that first bite of a spudnut.  Usually it also meant special friends arriving to assist as we devoured many more than one in a sitting.

 It has been over 12 years since the last time I made the spudnuts. I’ve had many excuses. “I don’t have the time”. “It’s too much work”. “I can’t afford the extra weight I will gain as I have no restraint when spudnuts are around.” “ The kids are all fit nuts and who would eat them”? But today it really didn’t matter. I needed an excuse to be busy and once I mentioned the word Spudnut, my husband Nick would not let me out of the task.  The message went out on our Fam Jam on iMessage. “Mom’s making spudnuts today.” I started as my mother had with cooking the potatoes. Then came the arduous task of making the dough and preparing for frying. Once the Spudnuts were ready for the glaze the children magically began to arrive with new family members and their partners. “Yum. Spudnuts” they exclaimed. They came in the door expressing the same feelings I had when my mother made spudnuts, and remembering spudnut days from their childhood.

I saved dough for my eldest granddaughter and had her little hands roll out the dough and use the donut cutter. Of course we had to eat a few holes! My son brought my mother over and she too reflected back on the days of on the farm where we were back to the basics. There was no greater satisfaction for me than hearing the new family members say these were the best donuts they had ever had. “They are spudnuts”, I corrected. The spudnuts disappeared as the fit nuts surrendered to their cravings. The family recipe has been passed on and I actually may have a few spudnut making recruits!  Pi day passed quickly and I was left with a feeling of joy and love with family close as I remembered those days as a child on the farm when it was going to be a “Spudnut Day”. Likely it won’t be another 12 years before Spudnut Day arrives again. Maybe it will even become an annual event.