It seems that there are things that are so vividly etched in your minds when we were young that they continue to be triggered every year throughout our lives. For me there is the smell of freshly mowed grass in the spring. It ALWAYS makes me think of clean (maybe because Spring is when Mom opened the windows and cleaned EVERYTHING). Freedom (I knew the end of the school year wasn’t far off) and I was finally going to ditch that winter coat and put on a pair of shorts and PLAY non stop. Another trigger is the first day that you see all those brightly colored leaves start to flutter from their trees. That makes me think of Apple Cider Doughnuts. Not just any apple cider doughnut but really fine apple cider doughnuts. I grew up in a rural town with an honest to goodness working Cider Mill. I remember being 8 or 9 and as soon as those leaves started flyin we headed for the Cider Mill. The smell usually reminded me of rotten apples but that didn’t matter because as soon as I had my glass of fresh pressed apple cider, I didn’t care how it got made. That amber fluid, sweet, yet tart, was worth anything my nose had to deal with. The real treat though was the apple cider doughnut. Again, sweet, yet tart, and I could chew it. It just didn’t get better than that.
As the years went on and I had my own family, we occasionally made the trip to the Cider Mill in the Fall. Not every Fall because sometimes there just wasn’t money for that and the other reason was that they replaced the apple cider doughnuts with get this, “A PETTING ZOO”. Great for the kids, although I’m hearing now they are not great for the kids, full of germs and other horrific diseases (they should have stuck with the doughnuts, sometimes progress just isn’t progress). We did go a couple of times and my children did pet the animals (I even once spent two days at the Catskill Game Farm with them), don’t let that get to DCF, and I never lost one child, but that isn’t the issue here. The real issue was NO APPLE CIDER DOUGHNUTS. I think of them fondly every Fall but for some reason there was more of a draw this year. I actually searched the internet. Did not find much of anything. I was willing to overnight them. 
Then yesterday as I’m sitting in the kitchen watching the leaves swirling around on their way to the ground, this first windy day here in the Northeast, and the phone rings. My BFF, Martha, calling about us getting together this weekend to attend a fall fair. Out of the blue, she says “Come early, I have the BEST apple cider doughnuts from the farmstand down the road.” Are you kidding me? I hope that s on the end of the word doughnut is for “slew of”. I’m settin the alarm. Thank God, for best friends, they never cease to amaze me.
