What's for Breakfast: Turkey Cheese Melt & Unbiscuit

Ed Bruske

aka The Slow Cook

Some things sound a lot better on a menu than they actually turn out to be on the plate. This "turkey ham and cheddar cheese melt" advertised on Chartwell's menu site is a perfect case in point. This is what it looked like on the kids' trays for breakfast yesterday.


As you can see, the "turkey ham," meaning turkey processed with chemicals to taste like ham, is sprinkled with grated cheese, then placed in the oven to melt the cheese. Mostly what I saw the kids doing was picking off the bits of cheese to get to the turkey. They ate the meat with their fingers.

The thing on the left that looks a little too much like it was found out in the woods is supposed to be a "whole wheat biscuit." I suppose you could conjure up a lovely mental pickture of ham and melted cheese sandwiched inside a fluffy biscuit. But I think we can conclude from this that the push for whole grains is definitely in conflict with our biscuit tradition.

I happen to love traditional southern food, and back when I was eating starchy carbs I loved nothing better than a good, homemade buttermilk biscuit. A biscuit made with whole wheat, as you can plainly see, comes nowhere close. In fact, I would call this inedible--and I think the kids agree. I didn't see any of them eating it.

We should just serve whole grains as whole grains and leave the biscuit tradition alone. But you know what? The USDA's proposed nutrition guidelines would eventually have all of the baked goods in schools made as "whole grain."

In my book, that spells the end of biscuits.