Falsafa-e-Falsa

I haven't been spending the last few summers in Karachi, much to my dismay.  It's not that I miss the scorching heat, the swarms of disease-carrying mosquitoes, or the sticky, sweaty feeling one gets just minutes after taking a shower.  I miss the falsas.  You read that right. Falsas, or my tiny spheres of joy, come into season just as summer starts, and for, quite annoyingly, a very short while.  They're intoxicating!  I remember having them for breakfast before I left for college, then buying some during break from a fruit vendor outside our campus, and then coming back from college and digging into my stash at home before and after lunch.  I don't think I've been that obsessive about anything else (apart from green tea, recently).  So you can imagine how heartbroken I always am when I get to Karachi and the falsa season is way past over.

 This year I had my fair share, even though I had, once again, missed them by a mark.  God bless my awesome Khala for freezing some for me!  Even after they were gone she had gallons of frozen falsa juice that lasted half as long as it would have if I hadn't been in the picture.  My falsa consumption hasn't stopped there, no, no! I don't know whose idea it was to plant a falsa tree some time back, but that darn thing is STILL giving fruit!  Yums and I occasionally stop by it and look for dark purple ones among the tons of green ones that pop up every week.  Obviously, my daughter shares the same appetite for falsas as me.  In fact, all the falsas we pick from our falsa tree end up in the party in her tummy.  *Sigh*  The things a mother has to sacrifice...

When I told my khala that I was still having one or two falsas (yeah, that's all Yums lets me have, can you believe it!?) these days, she was surprised.  She didn't believe that falsas would be growing in this weather, but they're very much there!  I took some to her a few weeks ago for proof.  After all, seeing is believing, but eating is a whole different level of palpable belief!  So why is my falsa tree still bearing fruit? I don't know.  I've looked for answers everywhere, and besides some Christian story about a cursed fig tree, Google has nothing to offer me!  Perhaps I haven't had the patience to look through all the search results, or maybe I'm typing in the wrong query, but for now, I'll just call it my falsa miracle.  The falsas are there because I want them to be, and the tree will continue to bear fruit as long as my (and Yum's) insatiable appetite for it exists.  Isn't that a doctrine of philosophy as well?  Everything that exists does so because it's perceived by someone's mind.  Don't be alarmed, I'm not converting to a mentalist or anything, just playing around with some possibilities.

Anywho... all this talk about falsa makes me wonder what they would taste like in cupcakes.  I'll surely post about them when that does happen.  That is, of course, when Yums lets me hoard away enough to bake a batch!  For now, I'll leave those of you hoping to satiate the hunger in their eyes with a photograph of the mini strawberry scones I made many months ago.  Strawberries don't come close to my love for falsas, but a berry is a berry no matter what angle you look at it from!

In case you want more information about falsas (to be further convinced about how awesome they are), you can find it here.