My mama was a good cook -- not a great cook, but a perfectly adequate one -- until she crossed into the realm of pastries, sweets and baking. And then she was phenomenal. She was known for her cakes and pies, her cookies and candies (chocolate cherry cordials, popcorn balls), and her party fare of petit fours, candied fruit, lemon tarts. But all of them....well, maybe except for the blackberry cobbler and the chess pie...pale beside the potato doughnuts. She'd start them on a Friday night, and finish them on Saturday morning, when the aroma would wake me and I'd float back to the kitchen in the wake of my nose to find a plate of hot, freshly glazed doughnut holes and a tall glass of cold milk. Heaven! She made them with a three-inch biscuit cutter than had an attachment you inserted to cut out the holes, which she'd fry separately and let them get barely crispy on the outside, with the interior lighter than air; the doughnuts were wonderful, but the holes were sublime. After Mama died, I was going through some of her things in the kitchen, and I found the grease-spotted, dog-eared index card with her doughnut recipe, handwriting faded with time. I sat in the middle of the kitchen floor and wept. And then I got up, found the biscuit cutter and the attachment, and made doughnuts. Mama left me many legacies in many ways, but when I think of her in the kitchen, this is what comes to mind.

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