Scones…all of a sudden!

Something I’ve wanted to eat, so desperately, every time I read an Enid Blyton book.

Scones, warm and buttery, shared over an evening tea.
Scones, warm and buttery, topped with strawberry jam and a dollop of cream, shared by friends in their garden shed.
Scones, warm and buttery, filled with the goodness of blueberries, wolfed down by hungry girls after a lacrosse match!
Scones, warm and buttery, relished while perched on the strong boughs of the Faraway Tree!

As a 12-year-old living in Trivandrum of the late 90s, scones were something that could only be savoured in my imagination! I imagined the taste, the texture, the softness, the pure joy. I imagined it to look inviting and appealing. I imagined having it at one of my school parties after final exams. I imagined unpacking a box of scones during a school excursion. I have imagined a lot of scones, in short 😀

After about 7-8 years, I found something in a bakery, which the owner told me was a  Cream Scone. I jumped at it, bought one, bit into with much joy and immediately spat out and threw from my hand 😀 Yuck. “These aren’t scones“, I told him indignantly. It was just something shaped like an ice-cream cone, filled with sugary cream. Uuuugh. It was not warm, not buttery, and definitely not soft. And, did not look in the least fancy!

In time, I forgot about them. Then, after the Internet age dawned and flourished, every time I came across the word scones, I always meant to look it up, but never managed to.

Until last Thursday,  11th October 2018 (yes, verrrrrrrrrry late, I know!), when I opened my blog, saw a reply to a comment I left in another blog on Enid Blyton books and was hit by the thought of warm buttery scones! I immediately went on Google to look for images of scones and went “EH!?”

I guess despite telling the shopkeeper what he gave me wasn’t a scone, I might have expected scones to actually be shaped like a cone and have jam and butter filling 😀 Or, at least to look more fancy. These pics did not look fancy at all! Well, not the scones by themselves (though the accompaniments made the whole photograph pretty colourful and bright). They didn’t look warm or buttery or soft. Maybe I imagined it all wrong and simply craved for the wrong thing all these years. Blow Enid Blyton and her art of converting the mundane into yummilicious awesomeness!

Yesterday, Sunday, a colleague returned to work from his 3-week Canadian vacation and told us how he learnt from his aunt to make…yes, scones! What a coincidence. To this, another colleague went “Oooh, really? I’ve always wanted to taste a scone.” And, there I interjected and dashed her dreams using my new-found knowledge on scones, saying it’s not as fancy as it sounds, it is a flat, squarish thing and “looks more like an egg puff with no egg inside” 😛 And she goes “Really? I thought it was like a cone-shaped something, creamy and sweet“. And then, accompanied by nods from the new scone chef, I proceeded to tell her how it’s made and how quick and simple the whole process is, and most importantly how it is not shaped like a cone.

And today, Monday, I ate my first ever scone! And, while it looked exactly as scones look, the dear little thing definitely lived up to every bit of my imagination.

It was warm, buttery, soft and oh-my-good-lord-delicious! ❤

And now, I feel like an entire era has come to an end 😉 The Age of the Scones is officially over!

8 on 10.10.2018

Pumbaa, I mean. Eight! And, he has not a clue!

I made such a fuss of him in the morning before leaving to work, which surprised him fully well. His tail was wagging at 60 miles an hour, shaking his entire body and he kept circling me like I was some kind of God 😉 And I kept asking him, in my most energetic tone, “Today is your happy birthday Pumbaa…do you know?!” and each time he got more and more excited. I stopped only when I began to worry his tail may break off 😛

In the evening, I went home with some goodies and the two furballs had a little “Pumbaa Party” — with carrot cake, half a doughnut, chewsticks, biscuits and a bit of kibble. The surprise on Khloe’s face at this special meal was a sight in itself! 😀

❤ ❤ ❤

A month ago, we took Pumbaa and Khloe to the vet here for their annual shots. The vet smiled, seeing Pumbaa in his hyper-energy, unable to sit still even for a minute, wanting to jump all over me, lick my face, put his paw around my shoulder, etc. And all this, in front of a perfectly calm, quiet Khloe who seemed to wonder what the boy was up to. The vet, after administering her shots, turned to Pumbaa and said “So, how old are you, my boy? Two?” He’d just been told that Khloe was 11, so I suppose he saw the hyperactive Pumbaa and assumed the boy must be a pup 😛 His eyes nearly fell out when we told him Pumbaa would be 8 in a month.

Pumbaa never got over his habit of jumping on people when someone walks in the door. When he was young, to make sure he wouldn’t nip us during those joyful jumps, we always asked him to quickly go fetch his toy. Poor darling, he now thinks anytime someone walks in the door, he must first fetch his toy and then welcome them and jump all over 😀

In his defense, we never got him trained to “be a good boy”. He’s a free-spirited dog and I have always been of the opinion that dogs be allowed to be themselves. To be like humans, we have human children to train, don’t we? 😀 I’ve never felt the need for him to know how to roll over, beg, shake hands, etc. That’s not what dogs are meant for. Well, he does know the words sit and stay (and sometimes I do wish he knew to heel) — but whether he obeys those commands depends on whether we have anything edible in our hands at that moment. 😉

Pumbaa has still not gotten over his love for toys. You give him a toy and he is on top of the world. You give him another toy expecting him to abandon the first one, but he is just a proud owner of two toys. On hindsight, we should never have named Khloe so, for initially, every time we asked Pumbaa “Where is Khloe?“, he used to immediately fetch his toy 😀

Pumbaa has still not gotten over his mad energy-spending rushes around the house. It’s one of the most hilarious things I’ve seen, and remains so every single time. The way he loses control, runs helter-skelter, bouncing off furniture and walls alike. And then settles down with a toy, ending the drama as abruptly as it had begun.

In all these 8 years, most things I’ve written about him have not changed. And I hope to God they don’t. For, even when the entire Universe is conspiring against us, Pumbaa is a constant, loyal support and source of unlimited joy: always welcoming, loving, treating us like his favourite cake in the world (and that’s saying a massive lot!) 🙂 I wouldn’t change a thing about him! 🙂 You’re perfect as you are, Pumbaa…no matter what others might say. In any case, you don’t care a bit what others think/say about you, do you? Aren’t you like me in that matter? 😉

Don;t change a thing, darling. Be Pumbaastic, forever. Love you loads! ❤