Hacking a foody recipe so I can make it with an awake toddler

So last night we were at Applebee's (because we are officially Old People who go to Family Restaurants where it doesn't matter if Hannah cries a little bit, and they have unlimited refills of diet coke) and I saw something in the desserts that spoke to me.  Cinnamon Sugar Pretzel Bites with a cream cheese dipping sauce.  Yum.  But because I'm trying to be off deserts, and also because they were like $8.99, I thought to myself, "self, I bet I could make something like that."

And it's been a while since I've been domestic and tried out new recipes, so I decided to look online and find a cinnamon sugar pretzel bite recipe.

I found this one from some people called Kevin and Amanda, who seem to love cooking, getting excited over food, making gifs of their finished product, having a really great manicure; and they blog-crush on some other cooking bloggers called Two Peas and Their Pod.

They were really, I mean REALLY excited over these pretzel bites.  Like, seriously excited.  It was a group blogging effort with the two peas and the pod people, so there were four of them in a trendy kitchen getting excited over pretzel bites.  The post is really long.  They go into detail about the salted caramel sauce that's way beyond what I cared about, given the fact that I was just trying to satisfy a sweet tooth.

But their recipe seemed easy enough, and so I thought I'd try it at home.

The only thing is, these food bloggers don't seem to have toddlers roaming around in their walkers, trying to find things they can chew on, or digging through your purse when you're not looking trying to eat your lip gloss.  Also, I don't have nearly the kind of kitchen gadgets they have.  I have an espresso machine, a blender, a tea kettle, a toaster oven, and a soda stream.  And that's it.  No microwave (they freak me out).  No fancy mixer.

I was going to try out the recipe adding in my own little touches to make it something that I could do while Hannah was zooming around trying to eat the cat food.

So, going through their recipe, here's what I did:

Yeah, I have an old and new pineapple on my counter.  Don't judge.

"Combine the water, sugar, yeast, and butter in the bowl of a stand mixer and mix with the dough hook until combined. Let sit for 5 minutes."

Hannah was napping when I started the recipe, so gathering the ingredients and making the dough was easy enough.  Only thing is, I don't have a stand mixer or a dough hook.  And there's no way I'm getting one.  That is just way more of a commitment to domesticity than I am willing to make.  So I stuck it all in a regular bowl.  And mixed it with a spoon.  The way the pioneer women did.

Add the salt and flour and mix on low speed until combined. Increase the speed to medium and continue kneading until the dough is smooth and begins to pull away from the side of the bowl, about 3 to 4 minutes. If the dough appears too wet, add additional flour, 1 tablespoon at a time. Remove the dough from the bowl, place on a flat surface and knead into a ball with your hands.

Again, not using a mixer.  So just did this myself with my hands.  When it looked like it was all combined, I called it done.

Coat a bowl with vegetable oil, add the dough and turn to coat with the oil. Cover with a clean towel or foil and place in a warm , draft-free spot until the dough doubles in size, about one hour.

Easy enough, except I covered with a paper towel and put on the stove.  Because I don't know where a draft free spot would be that also wasn't accessible to either the cats or the baby.  

At this point Hannah woke up, so we had lunch and went for a walk at the lake.

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees F. Bring the water to a boil and add the baking soda.

My messy pulled-apart "bites"

Remove the dough from the bowl and place on a floured surface. Divide the dough into 8 equal pieces, and roll each piece into a rope about 22″ long. Cut the dough into one inch pieces to make pretzel bites. Boil the pretzel bites in the water solution in batches, about 15 at a time, for 30 seconds. Remove with a large slotted spoon. Place pretzel bites on a well-greased baking sheet.

Here's where I really cheated.  Hannah was zooming around at this point and ain't no way I had the time or space to roll pieces of dough into a 22" rope and then cut them nice and evenly.  So I just held chunks of dough in my hands, twirled it around so it made a skinny rope, and pulled pieces off that seemed bite-size.

The finished product

Bake the pretzel bites at 425 for 8 minutes, then remove from the oven and immediately place the pretzel bites on a cooling rack. Brush with the egg wash and sprinkle the tops generously with cinnamon sugar. You want to do this over a cooling rack and not on the pan you bake the pretzel bites on or else the sugar will stick to the bottom of the pan and burn. Then put the pretzel bites back on the first pan and continue baking for an additional 8-10 mins until golden and cooked through.

Again, I don't have a cooling rack.  So my hack for this was to put the egg and water into the original mixing bowl, dump everything in there and pour the cinnamon and sugar in, and then put them all back on the pan, with aluminum foil wrapped around it.  Tear it off, and the pan is like new.  No burning sugar to scrape off.  Easy peasy.  

The finished pretzel bites were yummy, which was the point of the exercise.  Even Jonathan, who's not a fan of sweets, noshed on them all night long.  There was also a recipe for salted caramel sauce, but I realized I had some from Trader Joe's already, so I opened that up.  Cuz why cook when you can open a jar?

Cinnamon Sugar Pretzel Bites with Salted Caramel Sauce: it's what's for Dinner.

Shabby-Fertility-Chic

So one of the drawbacks of fertility treatments is that it's expensive.  You get all crazy from the hormones, and you get to pay a lot of money for the privilege.  Consequently we are taking budgeting to a new level.  I'm not really a fan of getting into more debt over a reluctant baby, so we're cutting back on all kinds of fun stuff (travel, Target) for now.  Since we know it's for a finite period, it makes it much less difficult, and we can see it as a bit of a game.  That being said, once we get done with this, I'm going to try to keep up my new habits so that we can continue to save money.

For example, I never buy anything without first searching for coupons.  My mom was/is a passionate coupon-er, but it's been a long time since I've scoured the Sunday paper with scissors.  I feel like an Old Person for what I'm about to say next - bear with me - And now there's the Internet!  (See?)  I had no idea that you could literally just google, oh, "Viva paper towels coupon" and get a dollar off.  Who knew?  Well, I guess the people who are saving a dollar on my paper towels knew.  But I never did.  I feel like a total putz now.  I already felt putzy enough because I didn't catch on to Gagnam Style until it had like 300 million hits on youtube.

Anyway, we're also cooking everything.  Like, everything.  In the past month or so I've made cheese crackers, soft pretzels, and potato chips from scratch.  I've cooked all kinds of new dishes like a kickass tofu carrot curry.

But the holy grail of making your own snack foods are pop-tarts.  Again, call me late to the party - apparently people on Pinterest have been making pop tarts for years.   But better late than never.

I love pop-tarts.  But I'm not a fan of the junk they're made of.  Or what a rip-off they are.

So I made my own.  I wimped out and used pre-made pie crust (but that's only because I had made my own pie crust for a mushroom-and-leek tart earlier and was feeling especially lazy)

Assemble the following:

Premade pie crusts
one egg
filling - I used strawberry jam  That Smitten Kitchen recipe lists all kinds of super ideas like savory pop tarts, ones with nutella, etc.  I'm going to experiment.

Cut out dough into a pop tart shape.

Cover one side with a light coating of beaten egg

Fill with jam (I'm going to need to practice this to see exactly how full to stuff them - mine keep exploding)

Cover with the two egg-covered sides going together (the egg somehow binds the crusts together)

With a fork, press down around the edges so that the two sides are together

Poke some holes in the top

Bake at 400 for about 13-15 minutes (keep an eye on them to watch when they look brown)

Take out of the oven, and let them cool

Eat without feeling guilty

Below I have my final result.  The little ones actually came out really good.  The big ones were too big, and I had stuffed them too much, so the one exploded.  Still it wasn't bad for a first try.  I'm definitely going to do them again, and make them smaller.  Still, for the equivalent of about 12 complete pop tarts, even splurging on the pre-made pie crusts, I was about about $4.50.  ($2.29 for the pie crusts, $.30 for an egg, and $1.99 for the strawberry preserves).  And they aren't loaded with a bunch of gunk I don't even want.

I like this thrifty thing.

So the book update for today is that I'm at 7035 words.  Yay for doing nanowrimo my way.

I'm doing a cheap-experiment tonight.  I am completely in love with peppermint mochas, but I'm convinced that I can make peppermint syrup at home, and save the $5.  So I googled "How to make peppermint syrup for coffee drinks" and found a Holy Grail website - not just peppermint syrup, but also pumpkin spice syrup.  Man, I'll be able to replicate my favorite drink in the world right now - the pumpkin hot chocolate from Sonic.  I'm so stoked.  In fact, I'm going out to the stove right now...

I shall report back if it's a success.

On a side note, I put on my Norah Jones Pandora station tonight, and feel very much like I'm in a Dido video - everything's in soft focus, and I'm moving more slowly and looking pensive all the time.  I think that what would make my life more interesting would be if I had a personal soundtrack to go along with everything I do.  That way when I'm just sitting on the couch reading Vanity Fair, I could put on the "At Home Reading in PJ's at 3pm" music, and suddenly, rather than just me being lazy on the couch, it would turn into something that's worthy of a reality tv show. Just thinking, that's all.

Happy Things

I have been snowed in since Thursday night, so going on a week. Here is how I have been occupying myself, especially during the three day weekend...

- long bubblebaths. I finished two books this weekend, and started a third. My minimum bubblebath time is at least 90 minutes. And it's lovely now that we have a huge window installed next to the tub, which J put in last summer. I open it up just a crack to let the cool air in, and watch the steam come rolling off my knees, and listen to the snow falling down in chunks from the trees when the branches can't handle it anymore. And I play with the cats, who seem to be massively interested in all things soap-related. They try to catch my toes, sticking out of the bath, and then I pull them under the water and they go chasing after them (the toes) until they're up to their shoulders in bathwater. Then they look at me with a weird expression, shake off their arm, and fall for it again. Whoever said cats were the smartest animals around clearly didn't live with nine of them.

- naps. I'm not a big napper. I usually wake up more tired than when I napped, and just want to go straight to bed. But I've been enjoying naps at the big picture window by the bed, with at least one or two cats snuggling with me, looking out at the trees and snow falling. Very cozy.

- cooking comfort food. On Saturday I boiled down a chicken carcass to make stock and made some lovely homemade chicken soup with carrots, celery, corn, and rice (cooked in the stock). That saw us through the weekend. Yesterday I made shephards pie, which is the ultimate in snowy comfort food. And I've been making a lot of grilled cheese to eat with tomato soup. I also made chocolate chip cookies and roasted a chicken tonight. It's gonna be a good week for food.

- playing oblivion. I'm almost done with the game (just the Dark Brotherhood and Daedric Shrines quests to do yet) and need to download the Shivering Isles expansion pack. And ever since I got my invisibility power, it's becoming less exciting because rather than kill monsters and goblins, I can just make myself invisible and run right past them, but really, there's nothing better than spending three hours listening to an audiobook, and hunting around Cyrodil for nirnroot (of which I have collected 263) and killing those stupid trolls. I hate trolls.

- downloading music. I'm so happy with my new music and the end of my entertainment crisis. I'm all inspired to start another choir-for kids this time, and go to choral workshops, and take some choral conducting classes and get myself more voice lessons. I'm also having fun organizing all of my previously unorganized music so that when I get a new zune - if my state income tax refund ever comes - I'll be able to stick it all on in good format rather than the hodgepodge that's on my archos jukebox right now. At last count I have over 6000 music files on my external hard drive that need to be catalogued. Gee. If only I knew where to find some music librarians...

Lately I've discovered, and fallen in love with, Jill Scott (call me slow - the rest of the world is already in love with her), Santogold, and the Blue Heron Choir. I've also rediscovered She and Him, Ivy, and Bliss.

So that's been the way I've been keeping myself occupied with this snowiness. Today I got out and shoveled for two hours, hence the fresh-baked chocolate chip cookies. Shoveling burns like 500 calories an hour, I read. I'm sore in places I didn't even know existed. More tomorrow, I think. It beats the elliptical machine. Today I enjoyed shoveling by listening to What Would Google Do on my mp3 player. Hopefully the car will be cleared out tomorrow. The hard stuff was doing the berm today. I've never used the word "berm" so much since living up here in the mountains. I never even knew what it meant a year ago. Now I use it in everyday conversation about six times a day. Weird.

Currently reading: Right Before your Eyes by Ellen Shanman.
Just finished: A Royal Pain by Rhys Bowen (part of a wonderful series of chick-lit mysteries set in 1930's London, and a new discovery of mine)
Currently listening to: Elgar and the English Choral Tradition with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic
Also loving: Dragonnette

A heartwarming sports story (and getting ready for Christmas)

my inlaws are coming for Christmas tomorrow, despite the snow. I'm looking forward to cooking and making a good spread. I think I'm probably the only person who misses being alone at Christmas, though. J and I spend so much time together, and I haven't had any time alone in the house with the decorations and cats. Plus we're all snowed in, so we're on top of each other. I used to love being alone with the decorations, and then with my cats, and I never missed having someone with me, or being with family. I guess I'm too much of a loner.

All my stuff is done, though, which leaves me with plenty of time to bake cookies. The house is pretty clean, despite the snow which makes it hard to keep clean. And my presents are all bought and/or made. We got out of the house yesterday and I got everything done. We still can't get to the post office, though, which means my parents are getting New Years' presents. Oh well. I'm snowed in. I'm not stressing.

And in the spirit of Not Sweating the Small Stuff, here's a heartwarming sports story. A football team learns that there are more important things than winning, and that sports are about empowering people. It made me cry.

Snowed in

Yeah, I live in SoCal, but at an altitude of about 5,000 feet, so I've got snow. This was my deck yesterday afternoon. More has fallen since then. It's just one two foot mess, that's all I can say.

I went up to San Mateo on Sunday (which feels like forever ago now) for meetings and our holiday party on Wednesday. I heard that snow was on the way, so I left the toilet seats up in case the cats needed emergency water if Tara couldn't make it over, and I made sure they had tons of food. On Monday night we heard from Tara that she was completely snowed in and unable to get out, and her road hadn't been plowed. So we started panicking, and thinking about driving home. We live closer to a main road, so in a worst case scenario, we could drive up, park and then walk to the house.

Everyone was telling us we should wait and leave early Wednesday morning, but we just really felt in our "gut" that we needed to get home sooner, so I went to some of my meetings on Tuesday, and then cut out by 3, and we headed home. LOTS of rain through the central valley, and snow through the grapevine, which is only 4000 feet at its highest point. We stopped for gas in Pasadena, and the Girl Scout in me thought to get some groceries in case things were bad at the top of the mountain. I got a chicken, carrots and celery to make soup, potatoes, green beans, eggs, milk, J's favorite saltines, a loaf of bread, some gouda cheese, and some Christmas cookies. I managed to fit it all in one canvas bag, except for the saltines, and when I explained to the bag guy that I wanted to bag it myself as I needed it all to fit in one bag because I might have to carry it a mile in snow, he looked at me like I was crazy. We also bought cat litter because we had no idea what the litter situation would be like after so long.

The drive up the mountain was spooky. No one was on the road, and we couldn't see because of the cloud cover. Everything was pitch black. We kept scanning the road to see where the snow started, but couldn't tell. It was kind of frigntening. Like we were driving into this world of the unknown. When we got to the top, J put the chains on the tires, and we were happy to see that our road had been plowed, so we were able to drive right to the bottom of our stairs. J started shoveling the driveway so we could park, and I took the groceries, my computer bag, and my purse upstairs and began reassuring the cats that we did not hate them, beg for their forgiveness, and clean up their - erm - "statements" around the house. It wasn't that bad, actually. They were definitely clingy, though, and I can tell they missed us.

We went to sleep happy to be home, but thinking that perhaps we had overreacted a bit since everything was ok. Then it started snowing overnight and by the end of Wednesday we had another foot on the ground, the 5 is closed through the grapevine, and all of our mountain roads are closed. So we would have been well and truly screwed if we had waited to leave until Wednesday. As it is, we're quite happy, all the electric is working, the cats are happy, the dish works now that it's stopped snowing and we could clear it off so we can watch tv, we're warm, and eating all of our lovely groceries. Last night we had roasted chicken, garlic mashed potatoes and garlic green beans. Tonight we had chicken croquettes. And the stock is boiling on the stove for soup tomorrow.

I'm hoping I can get out by Saturday or Sunday, though. I still have Christmas shopping to do, and I'm getting a bit cabin-fevery just hanging out at home all day looking out at the imposing pile of white stuff that's going to need to be shoveled. The snow plow came today and the road has a semblance of being clear, but it's really going to take some warm weather to melt this stuff, and who knows when that's going to come? Plus it's supposed to rain on Monday and Tuesday. And if that would freeze - ugh - that would be bad. So I guess we'll start to shovel tomorrow.

It sure is nice to be so warm and have the snow outside for the holidays, though. J's parents are coming for Christmas, and I'm hoping that it still looks pretty for them, and not just all gross and dirty.

Energy-Sapping Mothers

I didn't write my 2500 words today because I talked to my mother, which saps just about all the creative energy out of me (and hence, doesn't happen very often). I managed to spill out about 1050 words - up to 14301. Tuesday is a holiday. Hopefully in between thanking Veterans for their service, I will be able to get 2500 words in. Must have a couple of good days because this weekend is the California Library Association meeting in San Jose, and heaven knows I'll be having so much fun partying with librarians, I won't get my word count done.

Hardwood flooring is nearly complete in the bathroom. Now I just have to be careful not to make big messes when I'm taking baths. No more mildew.

Also made a pot roast in the crock pot today. We'll have french dip roast beef sandwiches for leftovers tomorrow. The cats are all cuddled and warm, and I am too.

VOTE!

I proudly filled out my ballot for Obama/Biden this morning.

Now I'm at the office. Tonight I will be chopping and dicing turkey for croquettes, and watching the election results, and John King's crazy map, until they are all in. Wolf Blitzer and I will become very close.

A break for Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, and hopefully a bit of novel writing. I'm currently at 7000 words. Trying to get a few days ahead for when thanksgiving arrives, bringing Sandor and his girlfriend Nicole from England along with it.

The other thing I'm happy about today is that Lewis Hamilton won the Formula 1 championship on Sunday. He's some kinda hot. And he's dating the lead singer of the Pussycat Dolls. A girl can still dream, though.

A novel, A novel, my kingdom for a Novel!

So I'm doing National Novel Writing Month, which is in November. The idea is to write a 50,000 word novel in one month, in between cooking the turkey and thinking about Christmas gifts, that is. It started November 1, and thus far I have about 6,000 words of something vaguely resembling a memoir/chick-lit story.

I've been writing in the morning, in the evening, and any other time. I am avoiding all books this month because I don't want to accidentally take their voices. Which is kind of a bummer, but that's ok. One month without a book won't kill me. Especially since I am ordering the new Matthew Shardlake mystery and can look forward to that. Tudor mysteries do it for me, what can I say.

I also spent the weekend being super-domesticated. I made pumpkin bread with real pumpkin. And then practiced making my Thanksgiving Turkey, with homemade stuffing (I cut up the bread myself). I have discovered a great appreciation for cooking in the past few months. As in cooking from scratch. No mixes, no boxes. When I go to the grocery store I buy fresh ingredients. It's been theraputic and meditative, and I love opening the fridge to see lots of fresh veggies that I've never heard of before. Like a celery root. What's a celery root? Who knows, but it sure was yummy in my turkey/leek/celery root soup.

And I'm super-excited to vote Obama tomorrow.