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| A Package of Delinquent Muffins |
The guiding principle for my life’s conduct has been this choral refrain from Gilbert and Sullivan’s Princess Ida:
“Isn't your life extremely flat
With nothing whatever to grumble
at!”
I certainly do have a plethora
of material to inspire such grumbling, including TV’s talking heads, natural
and man-made catastrophes, and my Republican friends, among others. But the
most recent grumble has been the failure of the Thomas’ Bread Company to
properly fork-split their English muffins.
Up until a few years ago, the
gentle application of thumbs to muffin’s edge yielded two halves with all the
requisite nooks & crannies one could hope for. Sadly, such a bisection now
requires the careful insertion of a fork all around muffin’s edge. Those nooks
& crannies appear to be unchanged, as is the flavor, and the little pools
of butter that fill the furrowed surfaces delight even the most selective of palates.
Samuel Bath Thomas created the
Original "Nooks & Crannies" English Muffin through a secret
process after opening his own bakery in New York City in 1880. I suspect that “forking”
his muffins were de rigueur in the early days. But as mechanization took over,
a machine with forking prongs was surely added to the production process.
Could it be that the prongs have
worn down? Or has a management team from McKinsey & Company recommended
that less forking would yield a better bottom line? The parent company, Grupo
Bimbo (ticker: BIMBO—no, I am not kidding), has not responded to my several
polite (unusual for me) inquiries regarding their failure to adequately
fork-split.
In sum, it is a forking dilemma!
