Burnt biscuits

It was May 1997 and my husband, David, and I had just moved into a new house. One evening, we cooked dinner for my Aunt Carline to thank her for all she had done to help us get settled. In fact, she had singlehandedly packed up and then unpacked my kitchen. I wanted everything to be perfect for her, so I set the table with pretty placemats and lit candles. I even wrote out place cards. Rather than serving the food from pans on the stove, I actually put it in serving dishes on the table. This was a high class meal....except for the fact that I forgot to pull the biscuits out of the oven. We didn't realize until halfway through the meal, and the biscuits were completely black.  I was embarrassed and disappointed in myself. I apologized profusely as David started to move to the trash can with the smoking biscuits, but then Aunt Carline indignantly cried out "What are you doing? You can't throw those away? Put them on this table." David and I watched as Aunt Carline grabbed and opened a biscuit. Surprisingly, the center of the biscuit was perfectly cooked. I thought she was only going to eat the center, but instead she ate the whole thing. As she swallowed the biscuit, she looked at me and smiled. "Those were delicious. Don't you dare throw those away!" She insisted that we wrap up the remaining ones for her to take home.

While it is possible that my Aunt Carline truly enjoyed the taste of burnt biscuits (She is known for her eclectic tastes --- apple pie with a slice of cheese, peanut butter on bologna.), it is more likely that she was trying to go out of her way to make me feel better about my failure. She unknowingly taught me what to do with burnt biscuit moments:

• Realize that burnt biscuits have value. Don't rush to throw them out, or pretend they aren't flawed. Savor the moment, grow through it, learn from it and years later, laugh about it.
• Use burnt biscuits as a speed bump not a road block. Aunt Carline could have criticized me and made me feel like a hopeless cook. Instead she responded with a grace that gave me room to grow. 
• Burnt biscuits are a product not a person. Moments of failure are not meant to define a person; rather they are meant to develop a person. Despite my failure, I wasn't henceforth branded the biscuit burner. It was just one moment in my culinary journey. My aunt's response gave me permission to keep trying even when you fail. 

Although this happened almost twenty years ago, these lessons didn't come to me until recently. In fact, it was this past Saturday morning as I pulled another batch of burnt biscuits out of the oven. I looked at my son, Johnny, who eyed them warily and said, "Johnny, let me tell you what your Aunt Carline does with burnt biscuits..."