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Category Archives: cooking

I make some pretzels!

I shamelessly stole this picture from my friend's Facebook page.

This post has actually been a long time in the making.  I first made pretzels with a group of jr high and high school girls in my church group several years ago.  One of the other counselors (of sorts) had an Auntie Anne’s pretzel making kit.  We decided it would be a good rainy day activity.  I’m not sure if it was actually raining the day we made pretzels.  Anyway, we made them, they turned out to be pretty good (at least, that’s how I remember it), and we didn’t do it again.  I saw the last of that group of kids off to college this year (tear).

Anyway, we got a new batch of kids and one of the younger ones was taking home ec as an elective and told me about how they made pretzels in class and how she wanted to do it again, because another student, or possibly the teacher, got to do all the interesting parts and she didn’t get to do much.  We didn’t have another kit, but pretzels are just another type of bread and my mom and I are both decent bakers.  I figured I could put something together where they could play with a yeast dough.

So, in May, enter this recipe.  You really do get pretzels that taste like they come from those pretzel stands (?) in the mall.  Pretty good.  The results of the time we made pretzels with the girls are up above.  We have some creative girls who aren’t satisfied with a normal pretzel shape.  The pile of poo pretzel in the upper right (it is a pile of poo, don’t believe what others may try and tell you) was courtesy of one of the counselors.  I’m pretty sure the girls were satisfied with them because we only had one pretzel left by the end of the night, which I brought home so my mom could try.  And then my brother ate all of it.

Since then, I’ve been meaning to make pretzels again, because I thought my mom would like to try one, and also I like baking.  I finally did this past weekend and my results were…decent.  You see, I did this fairly early in the morning after I dropping my car off for service.  I apparently didn’t have enough coffee and completely misread the ingredient list and I left out the high gluten bread flour.  You need gluten to make good pretzels…otherwise you have really mushy pretzels.  You would think I would have realized this when I was trying to figure out why the dough was so wet.  Not so!  I decided to carry through and bake it anyway, as I figured out what happened late in the game.  The result were some very nice looking pretzels, they smelled pretty nice too, but the texture was off.  Not really surprising.  They tasted pretty good though.  The favorite flavor was the garlic one.  I’ll have to try this again, partly to get comfortable with the recipe so I can start making changes, and partly because I had requests from work for pretzels.  But until then, you can enjoy some pictures of pretzels.  Btw, the pretzels had a rather off-putting texture the next day.

This one's a garlic salt pretzel

Now with 100% less fake butter!

I’m really tired right now and I’m not up to thinking my way through a post.  So…you get this instead.  This is how I make microwave popcorn.  I’m posting this because…I’m making popcorn right now.  I have the sneaky suspicion that my friend infected me with her zombie stomach, as I have been SO. HUNGRY. the last couple of days.  It’s really annoying.  Anyway, I’m trying to use popcorn to quieten up my stomach.

Now then, I like popcorn.  I like making popcorn in the microwave.  I like making it on the stove or over a campfire too, but that takes more time.  Microwave popcorn is much more convenient.  But, I don’t like fake butter and I generally don’t like the giant portion of popcorn you end up getting from those prepackaged things.  What if you’re the only one who wants popcorn?  What if you don’t want to eat a whole bag?  What do you do with the rest?  Stale popcorn doesn’t really taste that good.  One of my roommates in college (check out her blog, she takes some rather nice photos) did find out that you can keep popcorn from going stale if you store the leftovers in the fridge.  The next time you take it out, it’s still crisp.  But…then you’re eating cold popcorn and not everyone likes that.

I get around all that by making my own microwave popcorn.  All you really need are popcorn kernels, which are cheaper to buy than the prepackaged stuff, a paper lunch bag, a microwave, and some seasoning.  I often will add in a bit of oil as well, because I’ve found that it makes the seasoning stick to your popcorn better and that you have less unpopped kernels after microwaving.  This way, you can make whatever flavor popcorn you like and as much or as little as you want to eat.  And you don’t have to fill your house with the aroma of fake butter, which I really dislike (it probably belongs in Fake England).  The procedure below will give you about four cups of popped corn.

Materials:

  • a lunch bag
  • 1/4 cup popcorn kernels
  • a few shakes of season salt (I like it because it’s salty and paprika-y, but use whatever you like)
  • 1 tsp oil (generally I prefer to use olive or grape seed, but canola works just fine too) – optional

Procedure:

  1. Dump the kernels in the lunch bag.
  2. Pour the oil over the kernels and shake the bag to coat.  Note: the bag will get oily, so I normally put it on a plate to microwave.  You don’t have to use oil at all, if you don’t want.  The kernels will still pop.  I just find that not as many of them do per given period of time.  I’ve also done this with butter, but unless you melt it first, it doesn’t really give you very good results.
  3. Sprinkle the season salt over the kernels and shake the bag to coat.
  4. Fold the top of the bag over twice to seal the bag, leaving a goodly sized chamber inside.  Some people use a staple to keep the fold in place, but I don’t find it necessary.  And yes, you can microwave a single staple.  It’s not big enough to do damage.
  5. Microwave on high until there is about 1-2 seconds between pops.  It’s about 3.5 min on my microwave.
  6. Tada!  Popcorn!

Now you can quieten up your stomach.