A patio and an oven II

A few more stories, freshly baked and sun-bathed...

My very own March Hare! But sadly, I'm no Alice although this city is no less than a Wonderland. Just to watch this precious creature munch away the greens is one of my most reliable stress-busters.

Chocolate cupcake batter, ready to get into the oven for that much needed puffing and preening.

And here they are! Chocolate cupcakes with red jelly icing.

A baby gerbera beaming with pride after its victory over lack of water and sun. Blame me, for the yellowing leaves and prolonged flowerlessness had almost convinced me of its decay.

And finally, the observer.

My summer of love

Humans have an inscrutable tendency to keep returning to things of the past. For me, summer is one of them - the summer of childhood, the summer of love and sometimes just the nagging sultriness of the season. With summer there comes a bundle of green memories that stir one to the very soul - the old and stubborn habit of recollecting tiny fragments of the past like a child gathers seashells on a seashore, and in the due course giving birth to a myriad of unexpected emotions. Memories that one loves to revisit, sometimes relive too, despite the inevitability of fate. Despite your own faults. 'Pleasing pain', the oxymoron is called.
Just like I keep returning to one of my most potent elixirs - Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez which is pure, unadulterated poetry in the guise of prose. A truly vintage read. If only there was a man like Florentino Ariza made of flesh and blood, and love, that walked this earth. If only love could actually transcend age and years, and hover on flapping its wings for an eternity of fifty-one years, nine months, and four days. That's how long he waited for Fermina Daza. Despite his six hundred twenty-two affairs of heart, very carefully in the dark whirls of his being, he had preserved his soul for her. I know it is magic realism at its best, but then what is life without a dollop of magic?!

Like the book, I must keep returning to my baking too, to keep my senses up and about lest the world discovers these fleeting moments of delusion and kick a good laugh out of them. Hence the return of the orange cake - classy and summery, yet light as fluff. Oozing with the love-like aroma, tangy and sweet at once, and laced with the orangeness of the zest, it is summer personified. And it's perfect companion - ice tea packed with fresh mint leaves and a hint of lime.

Summer sure fell on my lap like the elusive fruit from heaven!