As you are aware, people can be inconsiderate. Some people are constantly inconsiderate, but most are that way just because they do not think things through. Let me give you an example of the latter. For the past 15-16 years, I have been part of a men’s breakfast club – great lads every one of them. However, they do fall short in the considerate area at times – although certainly not intentionally.
At this breakfast we can have as many as seventeen present and all wanting breakfast. The server (I think that is what they call them these days) takes the orders which vary all over the place. Invariably, a couple of the lads will say that they would like to have waffles, but they must be “crispy”. The server takes the seventeen orders back to the chef. A good chef knows that he needs to get all the orders back to the table piping hot and within a minute or two of each other.
To confirm that, it is well known, that our group operates on certain principles. That is, you cannot have some people eating and others staring at them while waiting for their breakfast. Makes both sides nervous! Thus, the chef recognizes this, while he is frying eggs, scrambling eggs, making pancakes, oatmeal, special orders and who knows what else while at the same time watching that the waffles become crispy – and certainly nor burnt or worse yet un-crispy. Rather they are to be baked to perfection and so end up in the “Goldilocks” category.
Luckily, the establishment we attend has a good chef. As a result the food arrives in good order including the waffles which are indeed “crispy”. Now this is where the “rub” comes in. Those who have ordered the crispy waffles appraise them and find them very satisfactory. So what do they do next? Why they pour syrup all over them. You can readily imagine what the syrup does to the crispy waffles. Obviously, they are now soggy waffles. I mean how inconsiderate can someone be? The poor chef has labored hard to make crispy waffles, and a couple of the lads have rendered his/her work useless.
It should be noted that I do not order waffles at an eating establishment. The reason being that The Blonde in the house makes excellent waffles. In fact, she makes two kinds – one of the regular variety and the other of the Belgian type. She knows that I prefer mine crispy so that is the way she serves them. She also knows that I would never disturb her culinary endeavor by pouring syrup all over them. I eat mine with jam which keeps the crispiness intact. She in turns eats hers with powdered sugar and a touch of lemon juice. Obviously, in our family, we do not disturb the crispy nature of a food well presented.
Finally, I do recognize that the syrup manufactures have to live – even the evil maple syrup cartel in Quebec – so we use syrup on our pancakes. The Blonde has a good recipe for pancakes as well, and I will order them in an eating establishment. Pancakes are not normally crispy by nature so using syrup can be beneficial to all concerned – particularly hard working chefs!
Now, if more people would just think a little before taking a hurtful inconsiderate step. Life would be better for all!
Barry Evans writes about Life in The Villages for Villages-News.com