The Scone Bandits

Every Friday morning, my husband and I go out for breakfast at our favorite cafe. They serve the best espresso you can buy in our city, made with shade grown, organic, and -- though not exactly stated on their web page -- seemingly fair trade coffee. At least sustainably grown. The cafe owner is the most skilled barista I've ever met. I've been spoiled and now I refuse to patronize any place serving inferior coffee. So you see, I only have one option for getting my coffee fix on the street, or else I go without.

Said cafe also serves freshly baked scones, muffins, coffee cakes, etc. My favorites are the scones and unless there are only frosted or white-chocolate-chip-studded scones, you now know what I eat for breakfast. I like good clean carbohydrates in the morning, not a sugar rush. My favorites are the strawberry scones, even though I can only imagine the strawberries were bought at Costco and came from pesticide-laden fields. (Strawberries are one of the worst fruits, in terms of pesticide residues). But I don't let that stop me first thing in the morning, because those strawberry scones are very tasty.

I'm not the only one who fancies these scones. There is a small group of what I believe to be school teachers, who ride up to the cafe in their mini-van and fill a bag to go. They have tinted windows, so its hard to say how many are onboard, but the get-away driver waits, while sipping a frappacino topped with a sizable dollop of whipped cream. I believe she is the head honcho of this high-fructose-corn-syrup-rampage. They send the least intimidating member of their band inside to wrestle up the scones. A short, thin asian woman, who you'd be wise not to tangle with.

The first day I met her, she was behind me in line, as I eyed the last strawberry scone in the display case, waiting for the barista to finish foaming my milk. The woman baker came out and asked the asian woman behind me what she'd like. Of course she laid claim to that strawberry scone. Not to be outdone, I asserted my rights to the strawberry scone. The fall-out from this encounter was the owner admonishing the asian woman to call ahead to have a stash of scones secured. This was fine for all parties.

However, now I've noticed that on days when only sweet scones linger in the display case, that the plastic-wrapped day old strawberry scones are being set aside for the scone bandits. This is obviously not the end of the story.