[honeychile]

Is my "Little Ollie" right?! I'll wait, just to be sure...

For violet ice cubes: pick the wild violets when they're in bloom, and wash them ever so gently. If you can find an ice cube tray with round or another nice shape, all the better. but what you do is fill the tray halfway, and put the very wet violet on top. Once there's a film of ice on the cube, fill the cubes the rest of the way, and that way, the violet will be suspended in the middle of the cube! My wonderful mama has offered her freezer, should I decide to make a huge amount of these this year! I just have a standard size refrigerator/freezer, so this is a godsend!!

There's a recipe in the Alpha Delta Pi cookbook for the Violet jelly. It takes a gazillion violets to make properly, but looks SO pretty!!

Another idea is to dip the freshly picked violets in (pasturized!) egg white, then in superfine sugar, and allow them to dry. These look simply gorgeous on cakes & petit fours!!

I've never had any luck in drying them, although a florist cousin on mine has done so in a microwave (you can't use a microwave that you intend to cook in!). The color just fades to nothing.

All this and the ChemLawn people want me to buy their product to kill my beautiful violets - HAH!