So, while you’re waiting for me to get it together, I thought I’d share some more photos from our garden. These were taken at the same time as the rose pictures, but I didn’t have the time to post them all. I was busy packing, that day.

Be patient, I’ll tell you (and show you) about my amazing weekend, as soon as possible.

Meanwhile, it was a lovely, sunny day, and the flowers of my mother’s garden were beautiful.            

If I’m on the beach, maybe there will be dolphins close enough to shore that I could get some good pictures of them. Someday, I’m going to get a longer zoom lens for my Nikon, so I can get closeups of dolphins in and pelicans on the water.

When I’m in the chapel, I will be sitting with some of my best friends in the world, singing our hearts out, before the meeting begins. The weather is supposed to be HOT, so we’ll probably have the air conditioning blasting inside, requiring all the girls to bring jackets or pashmina scarves to wrap up in.

If you’re reading this on Saturday afternoon, I am definitely running around on the beach, in my water shoes, throwing a frisbee. Or playing volleyball, and picking the sand spurs out of the ball, every time it gets hit into the weeds. Or swimming in the ocean, because the weather is supposed to be glorious! And not wearing sunscreen, because I never do.

And if you’re reading this late in the evening, I will be sitting on the bleachers, by the campfire, playing my guitar. The stars will be shining over our heads, and hopefully, there won’t be any clouds for them to hide behind. We’ll go beachwalking, argue over the constellations, and jump up and down like little kids, when we see a shooting star. I always seem to miss them, because I’m never looking in the right direction.

I wish you could all be here, so since you can’t, you have something to look forward to, when I return. I’ll have pictures and a story or two to tell! Oh, and before someone gets after me, I wrote this on Thursday, and I definitely screwed up all my tenses. I’m pretty sure I went back and forth between past, present, and future, but I’m not going to try and correct myself anymore. Grammar-phobes, beware!

Some people think I’m overly serious, which means they’re obviously not around me enough to know better. Some people may think I take everything too lightly, which isn’t true at all. I take many things very seriously, but in the right situation, I still want to lighten the atmosphere, and keep everyone from diving too far into the dumps. But I certainly know which situations are too serious for even that, don’t worry.

You’ve all heard it said that, “I know this is terrible, now, but later, we’ll laugh about it”. I will often laugh about it, at the time, but if I don’t, you can guarantee that I will later. If you could hear my friend Imogen and I related our adventure on Magnetic Island, and how everything that could go wrong DID go wrong, you will know that we didn’t enjoy it at the time. Not one bit. However, after we arrived at that restaurant, starving to death, and begged them to feed us… I think we were laughing hysterically, at that point. While we continued to shovel food into our faces. Hey, it happens.

But who could not start to find that story funny, knowing that while we were attempting to snorkel, there was a goanna (type of monitor lizard) or possum or some other critter stealing food out of our backpacks? Knowing that when we were kayaking at sunset, I was wailing about how she could always see the turtles, but I swear to you, the turtles dived under the water when I looked in their direction. Stupid turtles. Or our kayaking instructor offering us a glass of sparkling grape juice, but when I asked what it was, he said it was wine. I was so tired, I thought he was being serious, unable to recognize the sarcasm. So, I told him I didn’t want any, of course.

More recently, I had a cold, and even when I was blowing half my body weight out of my nose (or least, that’s what it felt like), I was able to notice the hilarious parts of it. Mainly, I had almost lost my voice, which made me sound like a high-pitched frog. Of course, historically (or hysterically), I don’t usually stop talking when I lose my voice. Because my croaking always makes people laugh… or their reactions to it makes ME laugh. Once upon a time, I lost my voice after yelling my head off on some roller coasters, at Cedar Point. I kept our van-load of kids in stitches, for the rest of the trip. I’ll admit, I did sound like some boys do when their voices are changing.

Not everyone else agrees with this idea, of finding the side-effects of my illness to be entertaining. One grad student had a cold at the same time as I did, and when I commented on the hilarity of it, his reaction was “being sick is ENTERTAINING?!?”. I’m afraid he thought I was nuts, or that my sense of humor is, well… sick. Oh, well.

I have mentioned before that I am not a klutz, and it’s true! But I have a bad habit of sharing stories about clumsy incidents, and sharing them all at once, so it gives the impression that I really AM a klutz. I tend to fall, occasionally, not because I’m clumsy, but because my ankles like to “turn”. I try very hard to be careful on stairs… and then, I’ll turn my ankle (painfully, I might add), and take a big spill.

The last time I did that, I did some some serious damage to my knees, falling down my front steps. But what I thought was funny was that while everyone in my neighborhood usually knew what I was up to (fishbowl living, you know), nobody saw me fall. Amazing.

And when I got in a fender-bender with a large truck, there was nothing funny about being rammed from behind, while at a complete stop. There was nothing entertaining about worrying that my summer staff girls might have been injured, seriously, if the spare tire on the back of my CRV hadn’t prevented it. Most of us were in complete shock, in tears, and suffered from stiff muscles (from jerking against our seat belts, in the collision) for a few days, afterwards.

It was only some time later that I realized that having bumped my boss’s car, in the process, it meant that I would never live it down. Oh, don’t worry, our insurance paid for everything, and now, you’d barely know anything ever happened to my car. But having everyone come out of it unscathed meant that we could joke, with impunity, about how I was the one that dared dent his car. The nerve of me.  : )

But remember, while I will laugh at myself, I will make certain that everyone is alright, before I laugh at someone else almost injuring themselves. One time, my 2nd-in-command housekeeper, a good friend of mine, accidentally zapped herself with a power outlet. I don’t know how it happened, because she wasn’t being careless. But the shock of it really did set her back for a while, and I would never think that such a thing was funny. Especially knowing that her boyfriend might be really upset with me for allowing her to get hurt. Now, she laughed about it later, but I would still make sure my girls were cautious with pulling plugs from outlets, for some time afterwards.

Again, please don’t think I’m unfeeling or incapable of seeing someone else’s pain. That’s why if I’m laughing, usually it means something happened to me, and it struck me as hilarious. If something happens to someone else, I will be much more concerned about the other’s well-being. If you fall, or do something where you COULD have hurt yourself, I will be worried for you, and never a laugh will you hear. I mean that. I’m not a “laugh first, check-to-see-if-you’re-ok second” type of person.

When I started this post, I think I had some more funny tales to tell… but now I’ve forgotten them. Remember, there’s almost always a funny side, to every situation, you just have to look for it.  And maybe having a good laugh will make your day just a little bit brighter.

After the last week or three, the lakes are filling up, but I no longer trust the weatherman. Yes, I know that some of you never have trusted the weather people, but I tend to just check the report and figure they must know, somehow. But they’ve been SO off, recently. SUN! No, rain! No, sun! No, wait, what comes in-between again? My main hope is that after all this rain that has gotten us well away from any sign of drought, it will be rained OUT for a while. At least long enough for me to go to the beach, and have the sun come with me.

My two best friends haven’t been attending our Seabrook conference for as many years as I have (15 years). So, I assured them that we never have two cold and rainy May conferences in a row. We rarely have any that aren’t sunny and hot. But I was wrong, and two of the last three were not nice weather. So, this one has to be HOT and SUNNY!

I’ve been stalking the weather report, even though I don’t trust them anymore. It gives me hope that they’ll be right, once again. Whatever they were on that messed up their reporting, they’ll get over it. Or off it.

2005

I want to be able to run up and down the boardwalk, in the sunshine, without an umbrella. I want to be able to play Ultimate Frisbee on the beach, and go swimming in the ocean. I want to be able to see the stars, when we go beach-walking at night, with no clouds to make us feel claustrophobic. I want to be able to turn on the air-conditioning in the chapel and our cabins, not the heater. I want to be able to take lots of great Sunday photos, of everyone in their nice Sunday clothes, with sunny blue skies for a backdrop. Wouldn’t you?

~2009

Also, I would like a beautiful warm Saturday night to have a campfire, where I won’t freeze to death between songs, because I can’t play guitar with a jacket or gloves on. And where everyone won’t have to huddle so close to the fire that it blocks the heat coming to everyone else. This isn’t supposed to happen in May.

Anyway, I’m praying for sunshine and warm weather, and counting down the days until I leave for Charleston and Seabrook Island. If the weather report is correct, I’ll get enough sunshine between then and now, to get a decent tan before leaving. Have a great week!

I want this kind of weather back.

Hey, you never know. I’m just enough of a pessimist to figure I’d fall out of a tree for the very first time, just when I didn’t want to be caught at it.

But this time, I was waiting to visit with a friend (in a building, not in the tree), but they were running late, so I found my favorite tree branch, and took a seat. There’s even a nice spot where another branch broke off that I could hang my purse on. Which is a good thing, because this particular branch isn’t completely rounded, it’s like a tube that has a pointy ridge on top of it, making it a little more difficult to balance. I don’t need to be balancing my purse on my shoulder, when I’m trying to keep my body balanced enough to not tip off. But since it’s low to the ground and shady, it’s a lovely spot.

Over the last few weeks, I had noticed that a sort of pod was growing on the end of the magnolia tree branches, so I was curious to see if they were the early versions of the flowers or seed pods (or whatever you call them), but I really did think it was a bit early for that. So, the first few pics were taken before they began to open.

Then, on the day I was making myself comfortable in the tree, I had also wandered around to see that these funky looking “pods” were new leaves. You can see the shiny new green, just as they begin to untwist. And when they’ve unfolded, it’s hard to believe that they’ll ever grow as big as the rest of the leaves. But they will, of course.

The black-and-white photo is of the tree trunk, stretching up high above my head. The long branch with the green shoots coming out of it, straight up, is the branch I was sitting on.

I suppose if anyone’s familiar with the trees on Clemson’s campus, they could probably figure out where I was. And, as you can see, I was even curious about the look of the bark and where older branches used to be. Of course, my curiosity was helped by the knowledge that this tree wasn’t crawling with ants or other insects, like many trees usually are. That’ll deter me from getting close to any tree, but this one was bug-free.

P.S. And yes, after I came up with the title of this post, a certain song came to mind. It even made me laugh, when I thought of it. But if you’re singing it to yourself, right now, don’t be silly. I was all by myself in that tree.  : P

My impression, after multiple discussions with friends, is that every Aussie has their own perfect way of making one… or they admit defeat, and don’t make it at all. Maybe it always falls flat (though I don’t even know how that works, yet), or maybe they’re half American, so they were raised on a different combination of desserts. But another friend insists that there is no wrong way to make a pav. So, obviously, it takes all types to make a world. Even in Oz.

For my birthday, I decided it was time to make another attempt at pavlova. Not that anything was wrong with the last one, except technically, it wasn’t pavlova. They do say that it has to have cornstarch (cornflour, if you’re an Aussie) in it, to make it a pav. But as I’ve done more reading on the subject of the ins and outs of pavlovas, maybe it really was one, after all. The difference between a meringue and a pavlova is supposed to be that a pav is hard and crunchy on the outside and marshmallow-y soft on the inside, while meringue is hard throughout. So, last time, I thought I did, and then I thought I didn’t… and now I think I did make one, after all.  : )

If you are already looking for the recipe, I haven’t written it yet, so I think I’ll include it at the very end. So, if that’s all you want, scroll straight to the bottom of this page. You see, as I said, I was working from two recipes, tons of online advice, suggestions from my mom, and a little intuition thrown in. In addition, I had to translate the temperatures and measurements, too.

My original recipe, which my friend Imogen sent home with me, was printed off of taste.com.au, and is listed as a “Traditional Pavlova Recipe”. It doesn’t call for cornflour. For my second recipe, she e-mailed me the link to aussie.info.com. I did lots of flipping back and forth from one to the other, trying to decide what to do.

One problem is that Aussies use caster sugar (Americans don’t have this, except perhaps in a specialty store), which seems to be like granulated sugar that’s been blended slightly finer, but not as fine as icing sugar. In the end, we picked up a box of 4x confectioner’s sugar, which is probably too fine, but who cares? It’ll blend nicely into the egg whites, and it’s sugar. Adapt to the ingredients you have, especially if you’re too lazy to blend the sugar in the food processor.

When I began to dig out the ingredients, I practically had to climb into the cupboard, trying to find the cream of tartar, which was hiding in a small container,behind everything else. One recipe calls for it, and the other does not. One recipe explains that cream of tartar helps increase the volume of the egg whites, and gives the pavlova a crunchier crust. So, I thought, it’ll probably help, so I included it.

Remembering that I hadn’t messed it up the first time, so I couldn’t really ruin it this time, unless I did something completely ridiculous, I began my pavlova. I’ve never had any trouble with separating egg whites from egg yolks, so I quickly did that, and threw them in the mixing bowl. By the way, one recipe called for 6 egg whites, the other for 4-6. I think the 4-6 one was tailored more towards 4, so the measurements were a bit different. I went with six, and decided I’d swing with it. One recipe called for a pinch of salt, the other for a pinch of cream of tartar, so I used both.

My first recipe has my friend’s handwritten note that “Typically, in most Aussie pavs, you would use 1/4 cup caster sugar for every egg white – beat until no longer grainy”. So, it’s likely that their caster sugar is grainier than my powdered sugar, and you have to stir longer. And those cups mentioned are in Aussie measures, so I figured my 1 1/2 cups of sugar would work nicely with my 6 eggs. No, wait, one recipe called for 8 ounces of it… so I may have gone with that. Either works. I gradually added the sugar, vanilla, and white vinegar, though I think I saved the vanilla for the very end. It doesn’t really seem like vinegar and vanilla would go together.

Recipe #2 says to lightly fold in the cornstarch. This is where I needed a lesson on folding, from my mom, because I’ve rarely done any recipe that calls for it. The idea of gently stirring, in order to keep it from deflating, strikes me as very odd, but then, I’m using to stirring cookie dough. So, very carefully, I folded in the cornstarch, wondering what would happen if I stirred it too hard. Would it just evaporate before my eyes? That must be what my friend meant about it “falling”.

Also, in Australia, with no everyone having air-conditioning or insulation in their homes, I’m guessing that some of the issues may come with the fluctuation of temperatures inside the house. Even when our AC isn’t running, the house takes a while to change temp, so there isn’t usually any trouble with cooking projects reacting to heat and humidity.

Once the egg whites were ready, I put parchment paper on my cookie sheet, so that I could easily move it to a decorative plate, later. The first time, I didn’t do very well at getting the mixture in a circle, and hollowing it out to make room for the whipped cream. Of course, that time, I overwhipped the cream, so there wasn’t as much of it. But this time, I kept my circle smaller and piled it higher, in order to make a deeper hollow inside. And wished I knew, in detail (with pics), how my friends do it, and what it looks like when they’re making it.  : )  Recipe #1 also calls for making “furrows” up the sides. I’m still working on that part.

After much debate over the oven temperatures and timing, we put it into our convection oven. If you have a gas oven, the recipes call for starting with 400°F, and then dropping it to 250°F after ten minutes, and then baking for an hour. I see now that my first recipe calls for even lower temps. But if you have an electric oven, you start it at 250°F and bake for 1.5 hours. Final notation says that if you have a fan-forced oven (convection), then you “adjust accordingly”. Great, so we make it up as we go along. Eventually, we settled on preheating to 250°F, then dropping it to 235°, and baked it for an hour.

Though it was completely done, the outside of the pavlova wasn’t as crispy as it should’ve been, and the inside a bit soft, so I think I’ll bake it longer, next time. My brother has volunteered to eat any more than I want to make, for practice.  : )

When it’s baked, you turn off the oven, leave the oven partially ajar, and let the pav cool in the oven. I believe this is because if it gets cool TOO suddenly, it will fall. So, another case of possible “falling” that I have yet to experience, so I’m not quite sure what it would look like, if it did.

After the pav was almost cool, I brought it out of the oven to finish cooling, transferred it to a pretty plate, and cut off the excess parchment paper. It moved very easily, with the paper under it. Then, I prepared to make the whipped cream. The recipe calls for 300 mLs of thickened cream, so I used a pint of heavy whipping cream (which is ~470 mLs, I think). This time, I measured it out, but next time, I’ll just use the whole container, because you can’t have too much whipped cream. Also, I need to mix it slightly less, so it will be a little softer.

Recipe #2 doesn’t have any description of how to make the whipped cream, so I ran with what recipe #1 said. I beat the cream, 1 tbsp of confectioner’s sugar, and 1 tsp of vanilla together. Then, I carefully filled my pavlova, spread it evenly, and decorated it with blueberries and strawberries. We forgot to get a kiwi, or we would have added that, too. And I don’t know if you can even get passionfruit, here in the U.S. (it would probably cost a LOT), so that couldn’t be included. But I’ve seen pictures of pavs with pomegranate seeds on top, too. Raspberries would probably be marvelous, as well.

In the end, the pavlova looked beautiful. So, on to the taste test. When I cut the first slice, I found that the outer crust was softer than last time, and gave no resistance to the spatula. It didn’t hold together very well on the plate, either, so I had trouble getting any photos that didn’t look like a pile of white fluff. My family were all surprised at how light it is, like dining on air, and eating more than one piece didn’t feel like overeating. But despite any criticism that I make of it, with the intention of improving the next one, I think it was delicious, too.

I love how the sweetness of the pavlova, which really is almost the consistency of a marshmallow on the inside, contrasts with the whipped cream. You don’t have to put sugar in the whipped cream, but if you do, there’s so very little, that you just taste creamy wonderfulness in it. And the fruit gives it a punch of flavor, unlike the sweetness and cream of the rest. And getting the crunchiness into the outside of the pav is my goal for next time.

But again, six of us polished off the whole thing in a matter of minutes. And as we joked, if you’ve met my brother, he doesn’t eat four slices of any dessert, just to be polite. And though it was suggested that I could make lemon meringue or key lime pie next, I’m afraid I shot down that idea, because I’ve never liked either desserts, particularly. Oh, I try them now and then, but I’m not a big fan of lemon or lime in desserts, I’m not exactly sure why.

So, thanks for staying with me for this whole extended description of my latest baking expedition. This is what my compilation pavlova recipe would end up looking like, though you can feel free to vary it as much as you like. Remember, this is an Aussie traditional dessert, only slightly revamped for Americans.  : )

~

Rachel’s Aussie-American Pavlova

6 egg whites

8oz confectioner’s sugar, 4x (or caster sugar)

1 pinch cream of tartar

1 pinch salt

1 tsp vanilla

2 tsp cornstarch

1 tsp white vinegar

~

Using an electric mixer, beat egg whites until it forms stiff peaks. Gradually add sugar, beat until sugar is no longer grainy. Add salt, cream of tartar, vinegar, and vanilla, one at a time. Lightly fold in cornstarch.

Pile mixture into a circular shape, on parchment paper, on a cooking sheet. Build up the sides into walls, with a lower, “hollow” center. Make furrows up the sides, if you like. Bake until crunchy on the outside.

Electric oven: Bake at 250°F, for 1.5 hours

Gas oven: Start at 400°F, bake 10 minutes, then lower to 250°, bake for 1 more hour.

Convection: Bake at 235°F for 1 hour, 15 minutes (varies).

Let pavlova cool in the oven, with the door ajar. When cool, fill with whipped cream and decorate with fruit.

~

Whipped Cream

1 pint heavy whipping cream

1 tbsp confectioner’s sugar (optional)

1 tsp vanilla

~

Beat cream, sugar, & vanilla until soft peaks form.

~

I hope you’ve enjoyed going on this pavlova journey with me. My thanks to all the friends that have given me recipes and made suggestions on how to achieve the perfect pavlova. All measurements and temperatures are American, so be careful, if you live anywhere else.  : )  I hope more of my American friends will try out this recipe, and learn to love it as much as I do!

I admit it, I slept late, and really enjoyed checking all my FB messages on my Kindle. I don’t care if FB has to remind someone that it’s your birthday… I’m forgetful with own family’s birthdays, so how do you remember everyone else’s? Every kind message is appreciated, even if it’s early or late.

After enjoying my lunch at Zaxby’s, I lazed about, just a bit, trying to finish re-reading Pegasus, by Robin McKinley. Why, oh why, do we have to wait another year for the next one? But that book is even more marvelous, the second time around.

Finally over my lazy spell, I got down to business. While my mom was working on making chicken and dumplings, I had plans to make an Aussie pavlova. You’ll find more details in one of my next posts, because I can’t put it all in here. Working from more than one recipe and tons of advice, I was still slightly playing it by ear… but it still came out great.

I tried out one of my birthday dresses, a very colorful sundress, and enjoyed wearing it all day. And when I started to cook, I borrowed one of my mom’s aprons, so I would keep my dress nice and clean. I have a tendency to just wipe my hands on my jeans, when I’m cooking, normally. I know, dreadful. But aprons are made to go with dresses, even more than with shorts and jeans, wouldn’t you say?

My self-portraits were taken using the timer on my camera, and I had trouble getting it to focus. But I didn’t go get anyone else to take them, because I never end up getting the shot I want. I almost got it, this time, but why wouldn’t that crazy camera focus? The blurry one is my favorite one of my dress, actually, though you can’t see my face very well. And the apron shots were fun to try and get, even if the timer noise was annoying to some people.  : ) 

But you know how every little girl loves being in a pretty dress, with ruffles, and wants to twirl, twirl, twirl? I think that feeling still lingers with any grown woman, who’s wearing a dress they love and feels pretty and feminine in it. I didn’t twirl, but I’ll admit to wanting to wriggle with excitement (just like a little kid), whenever I looked down and saw the ruffles on my skirt.

My friend Courtney joined us for dinner, right after I finished putting the fruit on the cake. It only occurred to me later that since we couldn’t find any candles, we never actually remembered to sing the birthday song. And before there’s any confusion, my issues with being sung to have always been in public, not with my family. So, while it didn’t bother me that we forgot, I love it when we sing it at home.

The dumplings, the favorite birthday dish for my baby brother and I, were delicious, as always. Courtney had never tried them, but soon learned how marvelous they are. If you’ve never had them, they are a bit like buttermilk biscuits, but slightly softer, and cooked right on top of the gravy.

When it was time for dessert, suffice it to say, it was a success. I had no Aussies here to tell me if it tasted right, or anything, and I know it needs to be cooked a little longer, next time. But my brother wolfed down four pieces, and he doesn’t usually overeat.

It was a lovely, relaxed birthday. Everyone should be able to have a party-less birthday, once in a while, just enjoying being with their family and taking it easy. Thank you again for all the birthday wishes!

I woke up to lots of messages from my friends, and what could be more splendid than that? And they just keep coming. We often complain about FB and its quirks, but this is one thing about FB that I love, being able to hear from 10 million friends, all in one go. Even if I do have to highlight individual messages, in order to see them all individually.  : )

It is a day that the weather report is now promising to be sunny, though originally it was going to be cloudy, so I’m waiting to see if they’re right. We have no big plans except for chicken and dumplings for dinner, and I’m going to make a pavlova. Last time, it was a meringue, I think because it didn’t have white vinegar? I forget. But this time it is GOING to be a pavlova.

But for everyone who has wished me a wonderful day, it will come true. I know it, because I’m at home with my wonderful family (ok, I wish they were ALL here), and the joys of the internet keeps me connected to my dear friends, who love me, too. It’s a nice feeling. I love you, too!