Day 191 - Legend of the Fruit Scone

The morning fruit scone

Our next-to-last day and Ange is planning to spend most of the day tidying up our flat for tomorrow's departure while I am going to continue catching up on various graduate student issues that had emerged during the few days we were travelling in Germany. Now before you think that I might have been shirking my cleaning responsibilities,I want to say that I have planned to make my contributions tomorrow morning! However, before we got to any of the planned activities for the day, I convinced Angela that we needed to visit the local garden centre one more time for morning coffee and a fruit scone.

A cheese scone and the ones at the Garden
Center are massive!

Now you might have gathered over all of these days of blogging that we have a fond spot for the Fosseway Garden Center. Well, we do. Not only does it provide us with a brief walk through town and out along the road leading to Stow on the Wold, as well as the return back, but it also provides a lovely view from where they serve the food. Time and time again, whether it was the golden leaves of autumn, or the light dusting of snow on the top of the wolds, or the emerging leaves of spring, our table by the wall-to-wall windows at the back allowed us the opportunity to soak in the beauty of the Cotswolds, no matter what the season might have been.

With clotted cream and strawberry preserve

We have enjoyed both the cheese scones and the fruit scones, freshly baked each morning. One must arrive around 9:30 in order to get them right out of the oven. For today's blog, in addition to paying tribute one last time to our morning retreat, I wanted to provide a brief history of the scone (thanks go out to thequeenofscones.com for these interesting tidbits).  The scone was said to have originated in Scotland in the 1500s and was made from oats as opposed to today's version which is made from wheat. The word "scone" was either derived from the Dutch "schoonbrot" or from the Stone of Scone which is associated with the crowning of Scottish kings. It could also have come from the Gaelic "sgoon" which meant a "large mouthful." Scones vary by country, but the British scone is generally sweetened and, as was the case this morning, can include raisins and/or currants. Warm with butter and raspberry jam, they cannot be beat. Except if it is afternoon, you are in Devon, and you have it warm with clotted cream and strawberry preserve.  Oh heck, warm scones, butter, clotted cream, any type of jam, anywhere, anyplace, anyhow!

I know it doesn't seem to go together, but why not a 2.8% Ale of the Day: Hooky Mild, Hook Norton Brewery, Hook Norton, Oxfordshire