Pioneer Woman + Krispy Kreme Donuts = Wrong Again

Last week I was overwhelmed with work and kids and livestock and “life” so I violently burst into the forums and issued a throwdown challenge for the members.  Do you remember this—

—from the Confessions post “Shipping at Our House” July 7?  It struck me as a little odd because I couldn’t imagine donuts that had been sitting in the oven for 10 full minutes looking like that when they were put into a warm bowl (yes, not just “a bowl” but a WARM bowl).  So I issued a challenge to the members and asked if someone would be willing to take one for the team and do what Ree Drummond just told the world she’d just done.

Binko met my challenge and did an excellent job.  Want to see it?  Here you go.

Enjoy.

***I really really hate to update this after it’s been up all day but I couldn’t help myself.  Pie Near Woman and I were talking this afternoon and she mentioned some great points.  WHO is this person that Ree felt the need to cut off their head?  Is it a headless person?  Is there a REASON the head needed to be cut off? How do you GET someone to allow you to take a picture when you’re holding a BOWL (a FUCKING BOWL people!) of donuts and cuts your head off?  And who in the entire world has ever served donuts out of a bowl?

****And who in the HELL serves a BOWL of warm donuts when it’s 100′ outside to people who’ve been in the saddle for several hours and are now covered in dirt, sweat, and shit?  That’s JUST what I imagine they want to do after they get off their horse – eat fucking warm donuts with their HANDS.

I should totally never drink and read her shit because it’s baffling me.  And drunk and baffled is really hard. 

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Really Easy Donut DooDoo Recipe – posted by Binko

I’m within a couple years of The Pioneer Woman, live in the same dusty western latitude.  I know the band of black thunderclouds that chase across the plains, know the herds of antelope dotting the open range, the spires of lichen-covered rock rising from green pasture.  Sometimes a faded red falcon matches my speed as I drive to work, extends curved talons with a flat rise of his wings, grabs something wiggling from the grassland.

I blush when I think of all the rodeos I’ve watched with my two sons.  Not because I sit next to handsome cowboys in mud-splashed jeans, but because the events hold so much life.  Cowboys hoist themselves upon painted ponies.  They hold the horns of cattle, thighs squeezing cattle-back in mutual fear and ecstasy, tackling wild steer for the simple prize of a belt buckle.

When I read The Pioneer Woman, I wonder whether my life of drought and secondhand clothes and old cars is alien, or whether hers is.  I don’t know the rustle of new flowy shirts, the arms of a tight-bunned man.  I’m a single mom, a teacher, a woman with a simple stucco house on the edge of desert prairie.  I know a hundred ranchers, vaqueros, men and women who run cattle, who live by the amount of water that hits the ground. These days that ain’t much.  You could drop a match and light the sky.  You could breathe the local green chile stew and ignite the trees, evaporate the train station.  Monsoons are late; July’s missing daily shower is just one more promise broken by Mother Nature.

But donuts, oh, donuts… they remind me of my Gramma.  She died nine years ago.  Babcia lived in the middle apartment of a triple tenement house for all of her married life.  She worked all those years too, in a beat-up shoe factory she called the “coop.”  When I was a kid, I thought she meant it like a chicken coop, a place of barbed wire and rows of feathered ladies producing shiny patent leather inventory.  Later I learned it was really short for The Cooperative.  Babcia spent long days drilling tiny holes into wing tipped shoes.  She was an artist.

Babcia wore oversized vests she called housecoats.  She sewed them out of patterned sheets she bought at the Salvation Army.  She taught me how to hold the material together and let it run under the dragonfly of her ancient gunmetal sewing machine.  When she died and my Grampa let me walk through the house to choose something as a momento, I walked past her vintage jewelry and took those faded housecoats.  Nothing else seemed like Babcia.

She loved cooking squash and potato perogi, which she called “little pies.”  I lived with her for a few years, and we drank percolated coffee and milk out of striped bowls and wondered what Father George might discuss at his next sermon. Sometimes Babcia cried.  The fancy ladies at the coop, the slim ones with the modern A-line skirts and black-lined eyes, didn’t like her.  They made fun of her housecoats, her weight, her sack lunches of sauerkraut, beets, and sausages.

“They’re just jealous because you’re so good at skiving,” I told her.  ”Babcia, you’re so good at what you do. You’re so smart.”  But she shook her blue curls.  She didn’t believe it.

I learned to make Paczki – rich Polish donuts traditionally served during Easter season – when I was eight years old and covered in poison ivy.  Gramma painted calamine lotion on my wounds and let me lay down on her television couch and watch Lawrence Welk.  Bubbles and dancers and beautiful wail of accordion-backed polka kept me from scratching, while Gramma cooked cabbage soup for dinner as the yeasty dough rose.  I heard her grating horseradish, a rhythmic thump thump thump on the wooden cutting board, and then she danced into the den, in time to the music, and placed two cucumber slices on my eyes.

“Oh Gramma that feels good.  Will these make me beautiful?”  I remembered seeing a rich lady on TV having a facial.

“Beauty my ass!”  Gramma snorted and danced back into the kitchen.  I heard a spoon against the pan and the sound of running water.  Gramma’s voice mixed with the bubble music on the screen and the symphony of dinner surrounding her.

“Don’t be beautiful, Binko.  Be smart.”

When I saw Ree’s recipe for ranch breakfast – a ten-minute heat orgy of boxed fried dough – I had to try it.  Maybe it would remind me of Babcia.  Maybe I would find common ground with the rancher’s wife who seemed so distant, so worldly.

So, here ya go.  One lone western woman Vs food.  Let me tell ya…. the damn food won:

First Step: Go to your local Krispy Kreme or Wal-Mart (either works) and buy a dozen chocolate glazed wonders:

Play with your food. Holding circular things up to your boobies is always in vogue:

Preheat your oven to 300 degrees F:

Note the lack of designer range.   Hell, note the lack of a clean working space!

Place donuts, one at a time, on a baking sheet.  I got mine at Kmart 25 years ago!

Admire your artistry and disregard your dirty stove: