for sarah

alright kids.

you got me. 

blogging…NOT my strong point.

or maybe i should say consistency is not my strong point…

either way, you can clearly see that its been a full 8 months since my last post, and nearly a year since my wedding to the freckled boy of my dreams (ooops. spoiler alert).  and YES, i do realize that i haven’t even gotten to the part of the story where said boy and i even went on our first date.

BUT

some stories are best told in parts. you know.  to add suspense and drama.  which seems fitting because i super like my drama.

anyway.

i’m back to blogging and to drive you crazy i’m NOT going to pick up the story where we left off.  right?? i know i know—it’s killing you.  but you’ll live. 

so lets fast forward a bit in time from the sketchy dance convo…to last night.

yep.

the date is july 13^th.  in my new kitchen in my new apartment in my new town in the old state of Wyoming.  dinner time.

and here it is folks: WELCOME to my very first ever, food blog post (Sarah, dear: i made this for YOU)!

*disclaimer number one*  i am NOT a photographer.  therefore the pictures you may see may not convey the accurate deliciousness of the reality that was dinner last night.  don’t judge. (and don’t tell my dad, he’d be SO embarrassed).

*disclaimer number two* i love love love to cook and bake and try new recipes, and i almost always tweak recipes around, add or subtract to suit my liking, and combine two similar recipes—taking the best of each.  however the whole “i’m a genius so i make up my own recipes from scratch cuz i’m THAT good”—that’s my freckled boy, NOT me.  If you’re lucky, he may make some guest appearances and sprinkle some of his genius on my blessed readers.  But since today you’ve just got me—the original recipe for todays treasure came from pipandebby.com.  check it out if you want (ps they’re deliciously accurate photos put mine to shame.  so seriously. check it out.  http://www.pipandebby.com/pip-ebby/2012/2/27/ham-cheese-pretzel-bites.html/

*disclaimer number three* because the original recipe isn't mine (and i conveniently gave you the website where you can find it) i will just be noting my changes here.  if that's confusing....call me.  we'll chat. 

tweak number one: instead of adding the yeast to the flour mixture, i mixed it with the warm milk and sugar for about 10 minutes first.  i just like to make sure that i've got good yeast going and that i haven't accidentally killed it.  you can tell the yeast is growing when it gets slightly foamy looking--and by the smell. it's so...yeasty. 

well hello cute lump of pre-pretzels

tweak number two: when i'm supposed to let a lump of dough "rise for suchandsuch number of hours in a warmish, draft-free room" i NEVER just let it sit on my counter.  i have lived in too many frigid apartments with too little (or too expensive) heating to trust that ANY amount of time just sitting will make the dough rise.  so i have some life hacks.  one is to just turn your oven on low and set the cloth-covered bowl on top of the oven.  however if you actually have a decent oven, turning on the oven WON'T make the room, or the stove-top, hotter.  which is usually a very safe, very good thing.  however that means that your dough still won't rise.  luckily (unluckily?) we just moved to an apartment that may or may not be an upgrade from our last rat-infested home and SURPRISE the oven doesn't leak heat into the house.  that's why i took to my second trick (which, to be honest, is more successful than the first trick on average, but sometimes i'm too lazy to feel like boiling water haha).  so here it is.

a. leave your oven OFF

b. boil some water in a pot or teapot 

c. once the water is boiling, pour it into a 9*13 pan and place it on the lowest rack in your oven

d. place the covered, dough-filled bowl, in your oven on a rack above the steaming water

e. close the oven door and wait for the magic!

rolling out my non-rectagular rectangles...

i diced up some lunch meat and shredded cheddar cheese for my filling (instead of mozzerella like the original) and used about half a cup of meat and half a cup of cheese for each roll

here's where i began to deviate again from the original. sooooo tweak number three: i pinched off the ends of each roll, cut them in half and pinched them off again in the middles where i had severed each roll from it's other twin half.  this save A TON of mess, disaster, casualties, and heartbreak when you have to boil the little suckers

don't they look like little burritos?

this is what baking soda water looks like

here are my silly pretzel children disguised as boiling burritos

(make sure you flip them!)

then out of the pot, onto the cutting board, chopped into deliciously bite-sized yummies, then onto the silpat

(which, if you haven't ever heard of, is tweak number four: silpat. always, for everything you baking, anytime, for all reasons. makes clean up a dream, saves you from having to spray/rub extra butter or grease onto all the things you put into your oven.  thank you silpat gods.)

sometimes i sneak pictures of things baking in the oven

also sometimes i'm too impatient to wait until things are done, so i don't cook them quite long enough to brown nicely, but since they still taste delicious i eat them anyway

tweak number five: melting butter?  silly. dirties up a whole extra bowl and a pastry brush.  heck no, i'mma go totally country here and just peel back part of the wrapping and rub the stick of butter right on the top of the warm yummy pretzel bites.  what do you do with the strange looking butter afterwards?  wrap it back up and stick it in the fridge. no one has to know. 

sprinkle of salt and we're ready to devour!

so. once again.  were i to make these again, i would leave them in the oven until they turned nice and brown on top so they looked prettier for presentation.  however, the only slightly toasted pretzels left nothing to desire, as we may or may not have eaten half the pan in like...thirty-three point zero seconds.  

and since we're talking about next times, i'd LOVE to try a sweet version of this.  like a brown sugar, cinnamon filling, or maybe cream cheese with fruit pie filling.  or i could do some taco-like things (onions, peppers, queso).  the best thing about this recipe is that the world is your pretzel.  anything goes.