Last week, life presented us with a… situation. We could either look at it as an obstacle or an opportunity.
The coronavirus had hit Bahrain. Within 24 hours of announcing that the first case has been discovered, they were already up to nine more. The schools immediately reacted and closed their doors for a minimum of two weeks. Soon other businesses followed suit and within a few days most of my children’s extracurricular activities had been closed for two weeks as well.
As I said, this could either be a massive obstacle or a fun opportunity. Depending on the moment, I believed it was both. But during my more positive “opportunity” moments, I made a list of indoor things to do - we can pretend it’s a snow day (in Bahrain).
Near the top of the list was “make pretzels.” I’m not sure why, but this has been on my to-do list now for a while. I thought it would be something fun to do with the kids, everyone likes playing with dough and soft pretzels are yummy. Right?
So, I poked around online and I found Rachel Quenzer’s “Easy Soft Pretzel Bites Recipe” on The Everyday Mom Life blog. Check it out HERE. I printed it out, confirmed we had all the ingredients, and announced that this was going to be one of today’s activities.
I have one minor quibble with Rachel’s post. I did a search on Pinterest for “easy pretzel recipe“ and hers came up. I take umbrage with the word “easy”. The term “easy” is relative, I realize, but as a mother of a seven-year-old, and two five-year-olds, “easy” to me means ideally five ingredients, one pot, and 30 minutes total time (plus two hours for prep and clean up, of course).
This recipe only has about 10 ingredients, but the time factor is significantly more (closer to 2 hours for us). I know that it’s bread and you need to let it rise and you need to do things in stages, but I’m just saying that I wasn’t mentally prepared for that.
As I was working through it and prepping for the rollout phase, I was muttering that this was either going to be soooooooo worth all the effort, or I was going to get to cross it off my bucket list and never do it again. Either way, win-win.
I’ll save you the anticipation, it was COMPLETELY WORTH IT!!!
This recipe is fabulous! There is only one thing I would change… I would make twice the amount next time. They were so yummy I was honestly blown away. Better than any soft pretzel I had ever had before. I may have ruined my children for any future mall pretzels, but as I said, it was worth it.
One batch made approximately 75-85 bites. They were eaten before I could properly count them all, so this is a complete approximation and it also depends on how small or big your helpers make them.
So, next time you’re snowed in, sicked-in, or just want a yummy pretzel, set aside two hours and line up the helpers. And please, invite me.
