Indulgence versus Restraint

 

Pistachio-white chocolate and rosemary scones (Oct. 2017)

 

As I have often confessed here, I regularly indulge myself with baked goods or goodies how I like to call them. 😉

This month I´m happily exploring the wonderful world of scones. If you are in doubt how to pronounce scone the right way, here´s a funny little poem that illustrates how it is done correctly 😉 :

I asked the maid in dulcet tone
To order me a buttered scone;
The silly girl has been and gone
And ordered me a buttered scone. 

Thanks to Wikipedia I know now that in American English the pronunciation rhyming with tone is more common, whereas in Britain the two pronunciations traditionally have different regional and class associations. Here the pronunciation rhyming with gone is associated with the north of England, and the one rhyming with tone is associated with the south.

 

Pistachio-white chocolate and rosemary scones, detail (Oct. 2017)

The good news is, they taste great no matter how you chose to pronounce them. 🙂

Traditionally British scones are lightly sweetened and the basic component of the Cream Tea. But they may also be savory and at this point I have to thank my dear friend Su over at Zimmerbitch for having introduced me to her wonderful Rosemary-Feta scones!

However, having only ever tasted the sweet ones, I was a bit reluctant to divert from my  tested and trusted recipe. So I opted for a variety that included Rosemary but remained sweet in the main part, the Pistachio-White Chocolate Rosemary scone.

The recipe is simple: just add a handful of fresh rosemary leaves cut into little pieces, a handful of peeled pistachios and some white chocolate chips to the basic recipe for traditional scones.

By now, I also have baked the Rosemary-Feta scones but to my utter embarrassment I have to admit that I was far too hungry at the time to arrange them for a photo shoot and simply gobbled them down with some hot strong tea. 😉

Which brings me to my drawing of this week: my tea-pot is several years old, made of fine porcelain and although it has lost its lid during a move from which it also had a little fragment chipped of at the rim. It´s still perfectly functional though and I love it to bits (literally).

 

Drawing of my battered old tea-pot (micron ink and water color on paper; Oct. 2017)

 

You may wonder by this point why the blog title for today also includes “restraint” when so far I have only given way to the indulgence bit.

This has two reasons:

One – I needed a good title and was wildly doing research on indulgence where I came upon some very interesting theories formulated by the Dutch social psychologist Geert Hofsteede.

His cultural dimensions theory is a framework for cross-cultural communication and describes the effects of a society’s culture on the values of its members, and how these values relate to behavior, using a structure derived from factor analysis.

This analysis identified systematic differences in national cultures on four primary dimensions, among which is also the dimension “Indulgence vs Restraint”. This dimension is essentially a measure of happiness; whether or not simple joys are fulfilled. Indulgence is defined as “a society that allows relatively free gratification of basic and natural human desires related to enjoying life and having fun.” Its counterpart is defined as “a society that controls gratification of needs and regulates it by means of strict social norms.” Indulgent societies believe themselves to be in control of their own life and emotions; restrained societies believe other factors dictate their life and emotions.

Naturally this doesn’t even come near covering the whole topic but might give you an incentive to research further on your own if you´re inclined to do so.

 

The second reason for choosing this title is, that lately I have some trouble with my stomach and am now trying to restrain myself from indulging too often in my baked goodies. Luckily my very competent GP said that this will only have to be temporary and I´m already looking forward to all the lovely treats waiting for me. 😉