SHARING SCONES OF WISDOM

Consider the lovely scone, the chameleon of the baking arts.

via boomerPDX

It comes in any shape and flavor you like, and sturdy enough for any plate.

The scone represents the foundation block of modern civilization. It’s not an actual block like an English Christmas Pudding, but it does serve more than one purpose.

As a metaphor the scone passes bread with it’s versatility. You may break bread with scones, but you can’t break scone with bread. You may break a tooth on a hard scone.

(If the dough it too damp going into the oven, the scone comes out hard according to experts.)

Think of the scone as the missing link between biscuits and pastry. It can be cheesy or herbed, but some come with frosting.

Either way, you’ve got to believe the scones baked by Daughters of the British Empire for the Highland Games have the longest lineage of any scone in America.

These English ladies bring baking skills from the land of scones. England thrived on scones for centuries and continues today. They once ruled the world with a cup of tea and a scone with Devonshire cream.

English explorers drove deep into the world’s jungles with few conveniences, but a cup of tea and a scone inside the mosquito net sent them back home to a nice chair in front of a roaring fire with a good dog laying beside them.

Spiders? Snakes? Jungle fever? All take a backseat at teatime.

In a nice coincidence a gathering of DBE scone masters shared their wisdom two days after my column on generational wisdom appeared on oregonlive.com.

The topic was who will bridge the communications tech gap between elders and youth?

Seeing a roomful of English women approach a task that’s been bred into their bones is an experience all should share. They divide the tasks and synchronize their movements like a four man crew boat.

They’ve all made scones alone, and in other groups. They are scone experts and they know what they’re doing.

Their families made scones for the Crusades, WWI, and WWII. They haven’t stopped.

Call it right of passage to a time gone by, but a scone is a scone is a scone until it comes from hands making them for a thousand years.