Running and Eating (But Mostly Eating)

On Labor Day, I drove an hour and half through the (very un-summery) pouring rain to meet up with some friends for the Acushnet 4 Miler Road Race. Fortunately for us, the storm cleared for the race. Though the humidity was still oppressive, at least we didn't have to contend with soaking feet and the attendant blisters.

Acushnet is an old whaling town with a large Portuguese population. My own heritage is mixed (think vigorously shaken, not stirred), and some of my ancestors were Portuguese whalers from the Azores who made their way to Honolulu, Hawaii. On lazy Sunday mornings, my dad would often fry up a batch of the Portuguese deep-fried pastries called malasadas that he loved so much as a kid.

But then, everyone loves malasadas. You could say that malasadas are to Hawaii what beignets are to New Orleans. Leonard's is the most popular place to get them (though I like Liliha Bakery). 

Malasadas at Leonard's Bakery in Hawaii

In short, I have really, really happy memories of eating malasadas. As an adult, I would often pick up a box of malasadas when I visited my parents on the weekends, stopping by King's Hawaiian Restaurant or standing in line for the "malasada lady" at the Torrance Farmers Market. They were, though, never as good as the ones my dad tossed into a vat of lava-hot oil and then into a brown paper bag of sugar.

Before the race, I asked my friend's husband where I could get a malasada nearby. As luck would have it, there was a Portuguese festival running through the holiday weekend. We could get malasadas there! The line though, he warned me, could take as long as 2 hours.

After the race, we sauntered over the festival, tired, grungy, and stinky. Luckily, the line wasn't terrible - yet. When we got to the front of the line, we waited several minutes for our order to be filled, allowing us to observe the malasada-making process up close.

Bits of dough were patted out into discs (like a small pizza dough). Then, into the fryer they went before being coated with sugar.

The finished product looked like this:

Sweaty but happy.

Note the empty picnic table behind me. By the time we left (after eating other delicacies like clam cakes and linguica sandwiches), the line was at least an hour long and every available seat was taken. In fact, people were camped out on their own folding chairs.

If you happen to find yourself near Acushnet and there isn't a festival going on, I have it on good authority that the place to go is Lydia's.