We have officially survived Moving Day, that traumatic life experience Jeff and I keep repeating like a broken record every two years. As with other unpleasant but necessary life experiences (dentist appointments, final exams, various tests of reproductive organs), I usually have to bribe myself out of bed on moving day. In Portland, that means doughnuts.
Oh, doughnuts! How I love you! Fried cake with frosting and sprinkles, you warm the cockles of my heart!
Portland has good doughnuts, with countless independent purveyors scattered around the city. VooDoo Doughnuts gets all the attention, but waiting in line for a doughnut defeats the purpose: doughnuts should be guilty pleasures. If you have thirty minutes to weigh the pros and cons of eating a doughnut (or three), you're missing the whole spirit of the thing.
No, the ultimate doughnut in Portland is made by the humble Delicious Donuts, a small family shop in a nondescript mini-stripmall at one of the busiest and ugliest intersections in Portland (where E. Burnside crosses MLK). The friendly couple who runs the shop opens it at 3 a.m. six days a week; they often sell out by 9. Their basic cake doughnuts are soft with a moist crumb and just a hint of lemon; the yeasty raised doughnuts still have a bit of bite to them (none of this pure sugar, insubstantial Krispy Kreme nonsense); and their maple bars are both sweet and savory, without the cloying imitation flavor that ruins much of the maple genre.
And then there's my holy grail: Delicious Donuts' chocolate-frosted old fashioned doughnut. They shape their flavorful cake doughnut into a flattened ring, increasing the fry surface area and thus the crispness of its ridges, and then cover it in a thick, dark chocolate glaze - rich, dense, yet not too sweet. Yes, it's a heart attack in five bites, but it is also doughnut perfection.
So, for myself and for our movers, I pulled myself out of bed early on Moving Day to pick up a baker's dozen of Delicious Donuts. This was a fitting tribute to Portland: Boston might have cannoli and cream pies, but its doughnut market was long ago cornered by the nefarious Dunkin Donuts. Those sugary processed concoctions are a far cry from the real thing; doughnuts, as I know them, would soon be beyond my reach.
After securing my beautiful box o' doughnuts, however, I realized we had another problem. After 18 months, Portland managed to turn Jeff vegan just as we were packing up to move back east. My lovely doughnuts were a trial by fire: the poor man had to endure not only the trauma of Moving Day, but also hours of our house smelling like freshly fried dough and his wife having repeated food orgasms in the kitchen ("oh my gawd, this is sooo goooood!"). Some sort of recompense was in order.
Besides the doughnuts, we will miss Portland's large and growing cadre of vegan food establishments, from pubs (like Sweet Hereafter) to upscale cuisine (Blossoming Lotus, Natural Selection) to countless food carts and small cafes. This does not exist in most of the rest of the country, not even in the People's Republic of Cambridge, MA. Indeed, Portland has at least two vegan bakeries (that I know of). Think about that: a bakery that does not use milk or eggs or butter. Fascinating.
As luck would have it, we stumbled into one of them - Back to Eden - that very evening. Even I, a gleeful butter eater, have to admit that their stuff looks pretty good. Not as good as Delicious Donuts, mind you, but a plausible substitute for the true believers. Jeff got his vegan doughnut, and all was right with the world.
A few days later, we loaded up the car with the last dregs of our stuff and started the long drive east to Boston (Cambridge, to be exact). Early that morning, our friends came to see us head off into the sunrise, and they brought us one last farewell gift: a Delicious Donuts' chocolate-frosted old fashioned doughnut.
Oh, doughnuts! How I love you! Fried cake with frosting and sprinkles, you warm the cockles of my heart!Portland has good doughnuts, with countless independent purveyors scattered around the city. VooDoo Doughnuts gets all the attention, but waiting in line for a doughnut defeats the purpose: doughnuts should be guilty pleasures. If you have thirty minutes to weigh the pros and cons of eating a doughnut (or three), you're missing the whole spirit of the thing.
No, the ultimate doughnut in Portland is made by the humble Delicious Donuts, a small family shop in a nondescript mini-stripmall at one of the busiest and ugliest intersections in Portland (where E. Burnside crosses MLK). The friendly couple who runs the shop opens it at 3 a.m. six days a week; they often sell out by 9. Their basic cake doughnuts are soft with a moist crumb and just a hint of lemon; the yeasty raised doughnuts still have a bit of bite to them (none of this pure sugar, insubstantial Krispy Kreme nonsense); and their maple bars are both sweet and savory, without the cloying imitation flavor that ruins much of the maple genre.
And then there's my holy grail: Delicious Donuts' chocolate-frosted old fashioned doughnut. They shape their flavorful cake doughnut into a flattened ring, increasing the fry surface area and thus the crispness of its ridges, and then cover it in a thick, dark chocolate glaze - rich, dense, yet not too sweet. Yes, it's a heart attack in five bites, but it is also doughnut perfection.So, for myself and for our movers, I pulled myself out of bed early on Moving Day to pick up a baker's dozen of Delicious Donuts. This was a fitting tribute to Portland: Boston might have cannoli and cream pies, but its doughnut market was long ago cornered by the nefarious Dunkin Donuts. Those sugary processed concoctions are a far cry from the real thing; doughnuts, as I know them, would soon be beyond my reach.
After securing my beautiful box o' doughnuts, however, I realized we had another problem. After 18 months, Portland managed to turn Jeff vegan just as we were packing up to move back east. My lovely doughnuts were a trial by fire: the poor man had to endure not only the trauma of Moving Day, but also hours of our house smelling like freshly fried dough and his wife having repeated food orgasms in the kitchen ("oh my gawd, this is sooo goooood!"). Some sort of recompense was in order.
Besides the doughnuts, we will miss Portland's large and growing cadre of vegan food establishments, from pubs (like Sweet Hereafter) to upscale cuisine (Blossoming Lotus, Natural Selection) to countless food carts and small cafes. This does not exist in most of the rest of the country, not even in the People's Republic of Cambridge, MA. Indeed, Portland has at least two vegan bakeries (that I know of). Think about that: a bakery that does not use milk or eggs or butter. Fascinating.
As luck would have it, we stumbled into one of them - Back to Eden - that very evening. Even I, a gleeful butter eater, have to admit that their stuff looks pretty good. Not as good as Delicious Donuts, mind you, but a plausible substitute for the true believers. Jeff got his vegan doughnut, and all was right with the world.
A few days later, we loaded up the car with the last dregs of our stuff and started the long drive east to Boston (Cambridge, to be exact). Early that morning, our friends came to see us head off into the sunrise, and they brought us one last farewell gift: a Delicious Donuts' chocolate-frosted old fashioned doughnut.
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