“If you find honey, eat just enough—too much of it, and you will vomit.”

Proverbs 25:16

At Sunday morning’s breakfast table, each member of the family had something different, with each plate suited to the diner’s preferences.

Sweet Husband had a leftover homemade buttermilk butter-swim biscuit, aka the Saturday Morning Special Breakfast.

It’s the easiest biscuit you’ll ever make from scratch. Just melt a stick of butter in a square casserole dish, then, in a decent-sized bowl, mix two cups of self-rising flour, 1¾ cups of buttermilk, and a dash of sugar and salt. Plop your dough, which will be the consistency of quicksand, into the casserole dish and spread to the edges, watching that butter pool like hot lava. Use a sharp knife to cut a tic-tac-toe board into your dough, put your dish into a pre-heated 450 degree oven, and then cut the oven light on to watch in amazement as that buttermilk, flour, and melted butter turn into golden mounds of dense, tangy goodness.

Next, for the complete Saturday Morning Special Breakfast, fry some meat. It doesn’t matter if it’s bacon, sausage, deer meat, or chicken, but the meat of choice for us on Saturday morning was an entire pack of original Conecuh Sausage, which Sweet Husband cut into biscuit-sized lengths, split in half but with the casing connected on one side to make turning them easier. 

Can’t you smell it sizzling away? Conecuh Sausage is made in a factory in Evergreen, Alabama, right on the side of I-65. Drivers in the vicinity will sometimes note white smoke settling on the interstate, and oh no! they exclaim—what devastation is this? Surely a vehicle is on fire! Surely an emergency has occurred! Surely this will prevent us from reaching our destination in a timely manner! Oh, woe is me! 

But after meeting the haze and being hit with that mouthwatering scent of hickory-smoked pork sausage, travelers will indeed be drawn off course, like a siren’s song, to pay a visit to the Conecuh Sausage Gift and Outdoors Store. 

But fear not! If you want some Conecuh, there’s no need to drive to Evergreen, for it’s sold in grocery stores all over Alabama and the Southeast, and if you know what’s good for you, you’ll buy a pack every so often and let the grease coat your intestines and clog your arteries. 

Whoops! Did I say that correctly? What I meant to say was, turn those drippings into the best-ever gravy for sopping your biscuit. 

Oh, but I know, deep down, that the grease, despite all the wonders that it does to my taste buds, will wreak havoc on my innards. Therefore, there’s a reason why I indulge in only one special breakfast each week. 

I like to say that I can enjoy all things within reason, and maybe some things are perfectly all right, like a taste of Conecuh Sausage or bacon or butter or a biscuit. 

But for sure there are other things best left untouched, and there’s no need to make a comprehensive list of all the specific vices and temptations that plague us, for it would be long enough to wrap around the world times ten. Everyone’s got their own poison or problem to manage, whether it’s indulging in too much food, or else going the other way—counting and controlling every calorie to the point of anorexia nervosa. 

Maybe it’s spending too much time on social media or some other screen-based entertainment.

Maybe it’s dwelling on drama with your kith and kin, to the point you make yourself sick from worry or anger. This doesn’t sound like much of an indulgence, but it can certainly turn into an addiction, one of trying to control others when the only person on this Earth that we’re truly in charge of is ourselves.

Our taste buds, both literal and figurative, are programmed to seek out the fat and the sweet and the salty—the extremes of life—but those highs only lead to crashes that break us down a little more with each fall. 

Spending sprees.

Gambling on a sporting event.

Another drink. 

Another trip down the buffet line.

We can handle it, we think. 

No, we really can’t. That’s what they make cholesterol medication for.

And so on Sunday morning, I will eat my whole grain nut-and-seed bread with some mashed avocado, topped with a dash of savory sandwich sprinkle, along with some fresh black cherries. My coffee has no sweetener, only a splash of low-fat milk.

In the meantime, Sweet Husband eats a leftover biscuit with his special blend of Golden Eagle syrup and peanut butter, a sop of goodness perfectly suited to a slow Sunday morning. Youngest Daughter also enjoys avocado toast, but on white bread instead of my whole grain nut-and-seed variety, a product that I wish the rest of my household would enjoy, but until they really want to partake, haranguing them about it won’t do any good.

Youngest Daughter has also concocted her iced coffee—an ice-filled plastic cup, complete with a drizzle of caramel ice-cream syrup cascading down the cup’s inside, a half-shot of a different kind of caramel syrup, and a healthy dose (pun intended) of sweetened French vanilla creamer, which looks like about half the creamer in the bottle.

It barely qualifies as coffee. There’s only six ounces of the stuff in the whole thing. 

She asks if I want a sip. I say yes.

Good Lord, have mercy. It’s sweet enough to send me into orbit, but it’s a far better iced coffee than any barista could serve up at a real coffee shop.

I want another sip, but I say no, taking up my usual coffee, which now has all the appeal and taste of muddy water.

Maybe a piece of Conecuh will help.