Pavlova for Christmas

Last year for dessert for Christmas dinner, I made real Christmas pudding, steamed for hours & hours, and flamed (though I did use the "substitute butter" option, rather than suet - cow-based fat is cow-based fat, right?).

So this year, since my best girlfriend Rach has gone gluten free, I made a Pavlova, or Schaum Tart, or kiss tart Rach's mom's dessert - meringue with fruit & cream - I bought kiwi and banana and pineapple, but the pineapple was not ripe enough yet.

I made a lemon & tangerine curd, and layered that in the tart with chunks of kiwi & banana.

We didn't get a tree this year; instead I got out my mom's lite brite tree - ceramic, lights up with a 60-watt bulb.

The rest of dinner was:
Heidi's onion dip (I didn't have enough sour cream & Greek yogurt, so I used mayo and ricotta to make enough white stuff to go with the onions) with carrots, celery, peppers, and beauty-heart radishes, and corn chips
Eye of round beef roast, browned in garlic, then just roasted in a hot oven
sweet sour purple cabbage with apples, from Waitrose; their last year's Christmas lunch
roasted red potatoes, from my CSA box
the kiss tart
a tray of cookies

After everyone went home, I lit the menorah, had the last [large!] glass of wine from the 2nd opened bottle, and cleaned up while running through the "Cs" in my iPod - which got me to Jerry Garcia's Cats Down Under the Stars. The only version I had was by The Dead, remnants of the Grateful Dead, with Warren Haynes singing.

So I started trying to find free online with Jerry - it was harder than expected, disappointing, tho I listened to Mason's Children, but mostly found later JGB recordings, no Jerry. And, remember that large glass of wine - I woke from sleeping on the couch at 3:41 a.m., with only the vaguest recollection of what I had written - I had to turn on the computer this morning to find out. I was especially curious as to what I'd done with the pictures. Turned out I had edited and re-named them and filed them as I normally do, but no real great ones in the bunch. And the desktop was littered with downloads of JGB.

Here's a little slide show of pix; a little disappointing. And, what's really disappointing is the weather - snow turned to rain last night, and now there a crusty layer of icey yuck out there - I salted, and need to go shovel now.