Kick-Off

This is pretty. I didn’t bake this, no sir.

This weekend, the weather was perfect for eating. It was chilly enough to inspire a stoking of the stove and grey enough to keep me happily inside without guilt.

Seriously, I cooked all weekend.

Saturday the kids and I spent most of the day conspiring how to get the apples off the top-most branches of the tree. Let’s just say that a bevy of ladders, ropes, and long handled saws came into play. After a modest early harvest, and a thrilling game of apple-ball using the wormy ones, it was into-the-kitchen-we-go.

Staurday clearly called for a roasted chicken, no? Rubbed with butter, crammed with a lemon and some freshly chopped rosemary, it made the house smell like we were trying to sell it. While it was cooking I made some butter-beer-batter bread, in which I impulsively threw the rest of the chopped rosemary. Potatoes were requested, so my daughter and I sliced some thin and covered them with cream in a buttered baking dish. Our green consisted of market green beans with portobellos and fresh thyme. For dessert I took the apples from our tree and sliced around the icky parts. The remaining chunks were carmelized in brown sugar and butter, then poured over squares of puff pastry.

I knew Sunday was a soup day the minute I woke up. Potato leek soup is always a good remedy for a drizzly, chilled day. I usually like to throw in some lemon thyme if I have it, but I didn’t grow any this year. I did have some lemon basil I bought at the market, which turned out to be a nice substitute. Everyone knows that the best accompaniment to soup is crusty bread, but I’m a little bored with baguettes. I decided to bake some pretzels to go with the soup, but truth be told, it was more for the reason that I had a yummy, buttery one at the fair last week and I can’t seem to stop thinking about it.

They were ridculously easy to make:

1 pkg (2 1/4 tsp) dry active yeast
1 cup warm water
1 tsp sugar

Pour together in a bowl and let stand for five minutes, until a littel foamy. Add

1/2 tsp salt
2 1/2 cups all purpose flour

Mix well, get in there with your hands if you have to. Should be a sticky dough. Cover tightly with plastic wrap and let stand for 30 minutes. Pre-heat oven to 500 degrees.

Turn dough onto lightly greased pan and divide into eight pieces, let rest for about five minutes. Combine

1 cup warm water
3 T baking soda

in a separate bowl. Stir to evenly disperse, there shouldn’t be any chunks. Roll dough chunks between your plams to form long ropes. Twist and form pretzels into whatever shape you like. Dip formed dough into the baking soda wash, covering all sides. Let excess drip off, then place pretzel on parchment lined baking tray. Sprinkle with coarse sea salt or herbs or whatever you’d like. Let them sit for at least five minutes.

Bake in oven for about eight minutes, switching trays half-way through. Immediately after pulling from the oven, brush with melted butter, lots and lots of melted butter.

Eat them while they’re warm and lick your fingers.