Wedding Bell Blues

Just in case you didn't know it, there was a big wedding in England today. Prince William, son of Prince Charles, married Kate Middleton. The good news for Kate is that William didn't inherit his father's ears. The bad news is that the DNA is still there.

Millions of Americans got up in the middle of the night to watch the wedding on TV. Obviously, we are fascinated by British royalty. I have to admit that it's a lot better than getting up at 3:00 AM to see Obama, but why bother? For those among you who failed history, we fought an eight year revolution because we didn't want to be British. Then we fought the War of 1812 to reinforce that idea. So now the British take our money by staging royal weddings. It was estimated that 2 billion people watched today's wedding. Barnum was right, there really is one born every minute.

Mercifully, I didn't watch any of it, live or the video highlights. I was busy at work. On Wednesday, I had a few customers asking what we were doing at the restaurant for the wedding. By the end of the day, I had committed to serving some scones to celebrate the event. One of our customers arranged to purchase some scones from Starbucks and bake them at home. She would bring them in on Friday morning. Other customers agreed only to show up.

So early this morning, I set up a table with a white table cloth and a variety of spreads for the scones. I had checked at Harris Teeter and the bakery had cranberry-orange scones. Not satisfied with the grocery store scones, I decided to make my own. I called an acquaintance in Florida, who owns a bakery, and got a recipe. I made a trial batch yesterday, tweaked the recipe, and made a batch this morning. They were actually really good.

When my scone-baking customer arrived carrying only her purse, I sensed a problem. The frozen scones from Starbucks had trashed her oven and she was sconeless. She was relieved that my scones had turned out. I teased her a couple of times with, "I am a professional. Do not attempt this at home!". We gave all of our cranberry-orange scones to customers who were pleasantly surprised that a pancake house manager could bake scones. They probably were not as surprised as I was about it.

My scone-baking friend thanked me for what I had done for "The Wedding Breakfast". I told her to keep it to herself, that I didn't want people thinking that I could be nice. She pointed out that we were sitting at a table with scones, an assortment of spreads, and a white tablecloth. It's not exactly secret material. She was right. I guess that I can be nice every royal wedding or so.

The line of the day came after most had left. I went over to clean up the table. One of our night shift waiters was helping out by working as a busboy. He looked at the table and exclaimed, "I didn't know that we used tablecloths in the morning!"