Rumors of teddy bears picnicking in the woods have been circulating for about a hundred years, going back to when the species first originated. Inspired by those furry foragers, we hosted a tea party for guinea pigs last Sunday.

The point of a guinea pig’s tea party, naturally, is to foist newfangled finger sandwiches and soy flour scones on your unsuspecting friends. The menu included variations on some traditional tea sandwiches, but just to be on the safe side, we included a few more conventional sandwiches as well, such as wild smoked salmon with neufchatel cheese.

Cucumber & cream cheese sandwiches are a teatime classic; I came up with a variation featuring kohlrabi and buffalo ricotta, both of which were just sitting in the fridge waiting for divine inspiration to strike.

Kohlrabi is an undeservingly obscure vegetable with an awful name that nobody seems to know what to do with. It’s actually one of the more delicious members of the cabbage family, with a crispy texture and slightly sweet taste. It would make a great substitute for jicama or water chestnuts as well as cucumbers in many recipes.

We spread a generous schmear of rich, creamy buffalo ricotta on Whole Foods’whole wheat sandwich bread and layered thinly sliced kohlrabi on top. The end result was divine indeed.

But my “healthy Elvis” was an even bigger hit. Elvis was fond of fried peanut butter- banana sandwiches, a fabulous, and fabulously fatty, combination. My version used I.M. Healthy’s chunky honey soynut butter and banana, plus a layer of Le Pain Quotidien’s slightly decadent hazelnut/chocolate spread, not to one-up Elvis, but because it’s just so good.

Elvis gilded the lily by frying his sandwiches in butter. I chose instead to use my George Foreman grill, an appliance that doesn’t get the respect it deserves. No need for butter at all—I simply sprayed the grill with canola oil and grilled the sandwiches till they got the trademark “lines.”

Just for the record, keep in mind that “healthy” is a relative concept. My healthy Elvis is certainly better for you than the deep-fried edition, but it’s still pretty fatty. Not something you’d want to eat too often, but fine for a special occasion.

Which brings me to the scones. Steffi Berne’s Teatime Cookbook has a great recipe for Scottish scones, but it calls for a stick of butter. I tweaked the recipe to make it healthier in several other ways, but I just couldn’t bring myself to substitute, say, Spectrum Omega-3 spread. I use butter so rarely that it nearly goes bad before I get around to it, but this occasion seemed to call for it, as well as the clotted cream Matt’s been saving for just such a tea party. So here’s my version of Steffi Berne’s scones:

Scottish Scones
(makes about a dozen)

1 1/2 cups whole wheat pastry flour

1/2 cup soy flour

1 3/4 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp baking soda

pinch of salt

1/4 cup granulated sugar

1/2 cup (1 stick) butter, softened

1/2 cup dried cherries

2/3 cup low fat or fat free buttermilk

1 tsp orange zest

Sift together the flours, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. In a large bowl mix the sifted ingredients with the sugar. Cut in the butter till the mixture looks like bread crumbs. Stir in the dried cherries. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 15 minutes but no more than 24 hours.

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees. Cover a baking sheet with parchment paper.

Take the butter-flour mixture out of the fridge and make a well in the center. Pour in the buttermilk, add the orange zest and stir till a soft, sticky dough is formed. You can knead the dough a bit on a lightly floured surface, and then use a cutter to get uniformly shaped scones, or you can opt for a more free form scone as I did, using an ice cream scoop to drop about a quarter cup of batter onto the baking sheet to form each scone.

Bake for about 12 minutes, or till the scones have risen a bit and turned golden brown. Transfer to a wire rack to cool for a few minutes, and then savor while still warm, with an assortment of your best jams and, ideally, a jar of clotted cream.

We served the sandwiches and scones with a pot of Kalustyan’s organic Assam tea, followed by a pot of Takishimaya’s Santa Claus tea. Our guinea pig guests left feeling pleasantly stuffed. As for us, I guess we’re just pigs, pure and simple, because we went out for sushi a couple of hours later.

Image credit: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division ©1906