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Moore: Scones and other nonsense

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It’s remarkable how much people will pay for food that sounds fancy.

Take scones for example. Please, take them. All of them.

If you go into one of those fancy coffee shops that charges the same price for a drink as I pay for an oil change, you often will be asked if you’d like a scone to go with your order.

Don’t do it. It’s a trick.

The first time I was offered a scone, I expected something that exploded when I tasted it. What I got was something that tasted like it had been in an explosion. It was dry and brittle. Consuming it left me no other choice than to forgo another oil change to buy another coffee to wash it down.

Scones are what the beginner cooks in the back are churning out while trying to learn to make biscuits.

Waitress: “Hello, and welcome to ‘Foo Foo R Us.’ May I take your order?”

Future Scone Eater: “Do you have any buttermilk biscuits and gravy?”

Waitress: “Today’s special is a double latte with a swirl of vagueness and a scone with cinnamon spice spread.”

Future Scone Eater: “That sounds fancy. I really need to spend money on an oil change, but I’ll have the scone instead.”

Anyone who grew up on Southern buttermilk biscuits and gravy will never accept a substitute. And we can’t be tricked or swayed. We are wise to the ways of the scone pushers.

I was taught that the true test for a good biscuit was to fill your plate with gravy and drag half your biscuit through it. If the biscuit is the right flakiness, it will coat itself with the gravy and still hold together, allowing you to slowly savor each bite without the biscuit crumbling.

A scone will bond with the gravy and can be used as roofing material.

Another trick they use to sell you an alternative to biscuits is by trying to sell you something with a city name and “Scrambler” in the title.

When you order a “Scrambler,” what you are getting is a small amount of fluffed up eggs and a whole lot of air on your plate.

Waitress: “After I bring you your Quaker State Latte and scone, could I interest you in either our “Sacramento Scrambler,” or our “Seattle Scrambler?”

Scone Eater: “What’s the difference?”

Waitress: “About seven dollars.”

Your first clue that you’re being duped in a place like this is all of the skinny people. From Frappuccino Fred to Scone Slinging Sarah, all of them could use a cheeseburger.

It’s likely they are eating only the food they serve and are slowly starving. Their cars also need an oil change. Learn from their appearance and don’t order the Scrambler.

Another trick that’s used to keep you from biscuits are croissants. Especially, alliterative croissants.

Waitress: “We’re waiting on a shipment of air for our Scramblers. Could I offer you a ‘Crunchy Croissant’ instead?”

Scone Eater: “What’s in that?”

Waitress: “The air that we need for the Scramblers.”

Scone Eater: “Bring me two. I’m really hungry.”

The safe thing to ensure you get a steady diet of good, homemade biscuits and gravy, of course, is to marry well. If you are a woman, ask your prospective husband if he can make buttermilk biscuits. If he says he can, make him prove it. Ditto on the gravy.

The same goes for fellas and their future brides.

When it comes to something as important as biscuits and gravy, as President Reagan used to say: “Trust, but verify.”

If they say they only know how to make scones, don’t marry them. Hire them to fix your roof.

— John Moore is a Whitehouse resident. His column appears Friday. His book, “Write of Passage: A Southerner’s View of Then and Now,” is available from Amazon and Barnes and Noble.

Today's Bible verse


John 8:34

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