Pavlova - no - not the dancer edited 12-15-05

From Mother Damnable in London:

(see comments but it made sense to post it here as well)

She and I share a love of purple (or violet or lavender).

I really must go and clean my kitchen, but I wanted to share this recipe for Lavender Pavlova, Doesn't it sound divine?"You make the pavlova in the normal way but replace half of the sugar with lavender sugar.This is really easy to make.When Lavender first blooms take 2 handfuls and grind in a large pestle and mortar - or you can use a food processor - with 8oz caster sugar.I usually make lavender meringues but had the idea for lavender pavlova recently as I had a jar of preserved oranges and some honeycomb cream. I also colour mine with an organic violet food colouring. I really wanted to see how it would look with a lilac meringue base - and pretty darned good it did look

From Mother Damnable today: 12-15-05

Glad you enjoyed the recipe! ~ Lavender will not be in season here until next year but a lovely lady I know suggested using "parma Violets" which is a sweetie we have here, it's round and lilac coloured I think these ground up would work just as well

Sounds wonderful Mother Damnable but you're talking to a Yankee here. I deduced it was some sort of meringue and then I googled it.

Two recipes - New Zealand and Australia seem to have a Pavlova competition going. And yes, it's named after the dancer.

From New Zealand

http://tinyurl.com/c9ewa

And from Australia

http://tinyurl.com/cpsjp

I have a couple of Australian commenters; no one in NZ so far as I know. I'm sure Mother Damnable has her own recipe and I bet others of you do as well. Feel free to share. Google has a zillion pages which makes me wonder if I'm the only person in the world who hasn't heard of it.

My mom used to make wonderful meringue (my uncle had a chicken farm and eggs were easy to come by, even during the war) but I don't remember her ever using it on anything except cream or lemon pies. Pavlova is a stand alone meringue. Yum. She and her sister on the farm could bake like champions. I still make an angel food cake once in a blue moon using their recipe. I'll have to see if I can find it. I'd be more motivated if the eggs were free.

Elcie

I didn't realize until I received Mary P.'s comment just now that some of you may not know that Elcie has cerebral palsy. Quite mobile, gets around fine at home and uses crutches or a wheelchair for distance and at school. They believe it is the underlying cause of her problems with reading and writing. As she gets older more little things surface that weren't obvious when she was younger.

She's a very brave kid.

Coven's "One Tin Soldier" now playing. Anyone except me have a big crush on Tom Laughlin? The Billy Jack movies were very popular at the drive-in when I lived in Arkansas. I once sat through a triple feature with Jim and Tim asleep in the back of the car. He had a small part in South Pacific (a pilot) as well and we thought he was gorgeous. I had heard he and his wife were working on yet another Billy Jack movie. Don't know what the status is.

Time to get away from this silliness and accomplish something.

Talk to you later.