Real food

"What's your favourite tool from this box?" Benjamin said, plunking a play-dough food set in front of me.

"You know, buddy, I'm trying to eat my lunch right now. Everybody's trying to eat their lunch. And I don't really know. I'm not good with favourites..."

"You know what I hate about that picture?" Rachel asked. "The pretzel sandwich. I mean, I just don't think a pretzel could support everything they put inside. Maybe if they made a thinner sandwich or..."

"Pretzels are delicious!" I said. "That sandwich looks great...for a sandwich made of play-dough."

"Can we play with play-dough after lunch?" Miriam asked.

They ended up playing with Barbies instead. But for dinner I whipped up a batch of pretzel dough and we spent some time playing with real dough (instead of play-dough). We managed to shape some fairly decent-looking pretzels, except for those of us who found the dough a little too sticky to work with. Those people (Zoë) made pretzel bites.




Rachel and Miriam decided to specialize their skills. Rachel was rolling beautiful ropes and Miriam was shaping the pretzels. Daddy would have been so proud to see them decide on their own to make an assembly-line in our dining room. But he was at work (or commuting home from work) so he didn't get to see come about firsthand.

Alexander wasn't quite sure what to do with his blob of dough, so he squished it around and licked it a few times. But we still turned it into a pretzel because it was going to be (a) boiled in baking soda water for 30 seconds and (b) baked at 400°F for 15 minutes. We figured that would be enough to kill his germs off. And if not he's constantly spitting at and licking everybody, anyway. We're all used to his germs. Wanna come for dinner?

Here are all the kids working on their real-dough creations:

 

And here are our finished pretzels, fresh from the oven:

And here's our Daddy, home from work at last:

Benjamin's face is killing me and Zoë, in case you're wondering, is blowing a lovely mass of spit bubbles (it's something she and Alexander are super into right now, much to everyone's constant annoyance/chiding).

Pretzels aren't too difficult, but I didn't leave much time to make anything to really go with them, so we had chicken nuggets and pretzels with various dipping sauces—a Dippin' Dinner!—along with tomatoes, carrots, cucumbers, and cherries.

Andrew, who was happily surprised to be greeted by the aroma of freshly-baked pretzels wafting in the air when he walked in door, exclaimed, "What made you think of making pretzels?! I was just thinking on the way home that it's been a long time since we've made pretzels!"

"Play-dough, actually," I answered and the kids told him all about how they'd wanted to play with play-dough but we made real pretzels instead.

And then at dinner (because he doesn't like chicken nuggets (or chicken in general)) Andrew got out some lunchmeat and cheese, sliced a pretzel in half, and put together a pretzel sandwich.

"Hey, Rachel...look what Dad's doing..." I teased. 

"What? Why? Why a pretzel sandwich?!" she asked.

But these pretzels were so divine that I think she's now a pretzel-sandwich convert.