I’m really trying hard not to post all the time about grandkids. You could not tell that? Well, as Anne Shirley of Green Gables says, “If you only knew how many times I want to post about them and don’t!”
But I have to write about this. Colleyanna and I are reading the “Little House” books by Laura Ingalls Wilder. Currently, I am reading “Farmer Boy” aloud to her. I love how that book offers the series a stark contrast between the very primitive 1800’s lifestyle of the Kansas prairie and that of the wealthier farmer in New York. It doesn’t hurt that Almonzo’s sister is Eliza Jane, either. Last week the chapter was about Almonzo’s mama making homemade doughnuts.
As I read, I remembered my grandmother making doughnuts for breakfast in my favorite place in the world—that kitchen at 305 Goodlett Street— in the
1960s. I recall that my older brother, John, really loved those doughnuts. I think she made them most often for him and especially during the summer that he lived with my grandparents and went to summer school in their little town of Jacksonville. But, oh! I loved them so much, too!
So I got out that old cookbook that we made one Christmas shortly after her death, for all the family and quickly found that recipe. The doughnut recipe was well marked, having arrows pointing to it from all directions. I had never made this recipe (or any homemade doughnuts, ever). It has been some fifty years since I have tasted these doughnuts, But I found myself smelling and tasting them as I peered inside that memory.
So, I got out my old dough bowl, hand carved by my great great grandfather . I could hardly believe that I was watching Colleyanna shape the dough on a dough board/bowl that was made by her great-great-great-great grandfather, Joe Phillips, in the era of the “Farmer Boy,” himself. I asked her if she’d like to have that dough bowl one day. She thoughtfully said, “I’d like for my mother to have it first.” (It was probably used by my grandmother when she made the doughnuts those first times around.)
We fried those doughnuts in the old iron skillet that was also passed down through the generations. I lifted each one carefully and Colleyanna rolled them 
in powdered sugar. And just like Almonzo’s sister, Eliza Jane, loved the doughnuts, so did Colleyanna’s sister, Eliza Jane.
I’m thankful for all the memories of time with grandparents. If Colleyanna grows up with some of those sweet memories of her own, I’ll be all the more blessed!
And it smelled a lot like my grandmother’s house, in my kitchen, all day long.
