These Pretzels are Making Me Thirsty!

Hiya!


Well I finally found some time to get my Pav recipe online. I'm so glad yourequested it.... I know you will love it! Actually Susan you should have ago now that you are officially Australian Citizens (yes, Australia has accepted 3 more great people to herself....well done friends).


The Perfect Pav

Ingredients
4 egg whites (or up to 6-7 if you want it bigger)
Eggs MUST be room temperature
1 cup castor sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla essence
1 teaspoon white vinegar
2 heaped teaspoons cornflour

Recipe
Preheat oven to 150 degrees. Beat the egg whites in a metal bowl with a pinch of salt till white.
Slowly (1 tablespoon at a time) add the castor sugar and beat until mixture is no longer 'gritty', it should look glossy and stiff.
Add vanilla and vinegar.
Sift the cornflour over the mixture and fold through.
Place on a non-stick baking paper as a whole big pavlova or as smaller individual meringues. My tip was put wet kitchen paper underneath the baking paper.
For children you can sprinkle with hundreds and thousands or add food colouring to the mixture.
Place in oven, reduce heat to 120 degrees.
Bake a whole pavlova for 1 and 1/2 hours / smaller meringues for 45mins. Turn the oven off and allow them to completely cool while still in the oven.

When cooled, take the pav out and gently tip it upside down onto the serving plate, peel off the paper and let it sit. It will fall into itself and give you that great crusty, smooshy thing!

Serve with cream, berries, banana, kiwifruit, passionfruit, chocolate...whatever!


PS. I have also learned, living in Fiji, that humidity does weird things to eggs!
I always have to make my pavs or any baking, with the air con blasting.
So if it’s a humid day, make sure the fan or the aircon is on or if you don’t have aircon, take your kitchen tools to a friend’s house, Susan will happily have you over, as long as you share the results with her!

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Hope you’re all happy and enjoying the lead up to Christmas with your wide eyed kids!
Giorgia stopped believing in Santa last year, girls can be clever beyond their years – but she has kept the magic alive for Jonah and any other little people we have around as Christmas approaches. Lots of fun!

One of the Christmas foods I love – and there are so many – are those big fat pretzels with chunks of salt on them!
I think I just buy them for the salt! They’re too good!

BUT as I’m sure you’ve all heard, we may love salty foods, but they don’t love us.

So how much can we have before it becomes dangerous for our health?

Well it’s around 2300mgs daily, which is great I hear you say, but is that one teaspoon or a whole packet of pretzels?

Like you did with sugar, go and grab some packaged foods out of your pantry and have a look. Two minute noodles have about a day’s worth of salt and a tablespoon of soy sauce or fish sauce has more than 1000mgs.

Don’t forget to look at the amount per serve. You may have to multiply the amount shown, by the 5 servings the brand is telling you is in that little can of chicken meat!

Chips, twisties and alas pretzels all contribute to the tally and tinned tomatoes or tinned anything can take us off the scale. A tin of tomatoes with reduced or no added salt has a negligible amount, but the regular ones have lots, look for yourself.

Too much salt in the diet has been linked to high blood pressure, poor heart health, fluid retention, dehydration and kidney problems.

Also people with Diabetes and exsisting heart problems or high blood pressure should have less than the average of 2300mgs and should have their diets balanced by their doctors or a nutritionist.

Are you adding salt to your food through habit or because you absolutely can’t eat that egg without it?

Like all foods, I’m not saying cut salt out completely, but be aware of the amounts that your body can handle in a day and shop for packaged foods with open eyes, and read the nutrition labels before you buy them. Remember the fancy name for salt is sodium.

Also why add salt to our kids’ foods? Often they don’t notice of it’s not there and hopefully won’t develop a taste for processed salty foods when they’re older.

Meanwhile, enjoy your Christmas pretzels! And don’t forget to drink lots of water while you do, so you don’t dehydrate from salt OD and too much Aussie sun!

Lv Jane
©thefamilyroom 2006