"There are no shortcuts to quality." Ernest and Mary Hansen

The quotation is from an article titled Let It Sno, by Ian McNulty, on page 49 of this week's Gambit Weekly: a terrific article about a fine New Orleans institution: Hansen's Sno-Bliz Shop. They sell sno-balls, using the Sno-Bliz machine invented by Ernest Hansen. Sadly, Ernest and Mary passed away in the months after Katrina. But their granddaughter, Ashley Hansen, has inherited and re-opened Hansen's.

The concluding paragraph contains a lesson that goes beyond snow balls:

Still, there was art in the way the Hansens made sno-balls, the same approach they passed down to their granddaughter. The Sno-Bliz machine shaves ice to an extraordinary fineness, which gives the sno-balls their incomparable, snow-like texture. But this fine ice makes it harder for the syrups to penetrate all the way through. That's why the sno-balls at Hansen's are made in alternating stages of ice and syrup, a time-consuming process that helps explain why the lines usually moved slowly. An easy shortcut is to make the ice shavings coarser but, as the signs on the wall constantly remind, there are no shortcuts to quality at Hansen's.