Wet the drys, dry the wets...

Andrew made some delicious pretzels for dinner this evening. 

There's a meme about how making pasta is all about wetting the dry stuff and then drying the wet stuff over and over again. We make pasta from scratch enough for this to be quite funny: wet the drys, dry the wets, wet the drys, dry the wets, wet the drys...

Pretzel making follows a similar pattern—you wet the flour to make the dough, then you form the pretzels and let them rise, then you boil the pretzels, then you bake the pretzels... I guess that pattern is more of a wet, rest, wet, dry. 

In any case, it involved a lot of steps! And behold the beautiful result:

We used them as "pretzel buns" for sandwiches, which were quite delicious. 

Now, our table can get a little crowded sometimes, as you might imagine, as we fit all the food on it and people around it, so at one point during the meal—after everyone had already claimed at least one pretzel—the water pitcher ended up on the cooling rack beside the remaining pretzels.

Our water pitcher is a 4-litre capacity, rectangular-shaped Sterilite pitcher that Andrew's parents used before we did. It's not so old that it's vintage yet, but I'm sure it's on its way because it is so old that I can't find an accurate picture of it on the internet. 

The handle for the pitcher was facing away from Andrew, so he palmed it—wrapped his hand around the lid of the container and picked it up. This was a fine solution...until the lid popped off the container and the pitcher crashed back down to the table, tumbled over, and baptized those pretzels.

Andrew sat stunned, his hand frozen in midair, clinging to the lid of the pitcher.

Zoë screamed. Phoebe howled. Alexander sat with his mouth wide open. Miriam and I started scrambling for towels and Rachel? Well, Rachel was the real hero of the day. 

"OVEN!" she bellowed, and whisked those soggy pretzels off to the kitchen to pop them back into the still-warm oven where they dried off quite nicely. 

I like to think her quick-thinking was due to my influence, but she's also been known to think quickly on her feet, so it could just be her own genius shining through...though I don't know where her brain was this evening when she was trying to figure out a good time to invite friends over again. She and Miriam had one friend come over this evening for a movie and s'mores, but they quickly decided it should happen again. Rachel, calculating calendar dates in her head, suggested quite seriously...February 31. It would be a Friday... None of them had any plans...

Miriam and Andie looked at Rachel like she was losing her mind, and then suggested March 3.

So, she might not be good with dates, but she is good with dough and we sure appreciated our twice-baked pretzels!

(Rachel joked that they were like refried beans. Everybody likes refried beans, so why not rebaked pretzels?)