Looking back at my Lenten disciplines for 2009, I find it was a surprising exercise. While I can't say I was perfect in keeping them, two worked so well I intend to continue the practices.
Discipline 1 was downright pleasant, except on days when my evenings were taken up by other things, like choir practice; then I felt entitled to at least a few minutes of computer time after getting home. But even then the rule kept that time short. I enjoyed having the excuse to stop work, and it dovetailed nicely with Discipline 3: (More)The computer goes off at 9:00 every night. When I stick to a 10 p.m. bedtime, my life goes much better, but that's not always easy, especially when I'm in the middle of a project and "just one more thing" can lead to midnight or beyond. Not only are most of my projects computer-oriented, but for some reason computing is one of those areas where I blink and two hours have passed. If I get nothing else from this discipline, at least I'll be better rested.
Lord of the Rings fans may remember Shire Year 1420, when "the fruit was so plentiful that young hobbits very nearly bathed in strawberries and cream...." That's what life has been like at our house for the past few weeks. It's strawberry season in Florida, and we've been treating ourselves to strawberries on our cereal, strawberry shortcake, strawberry-yoghurt pie, and—fresh rhubarb is also available now—strawberry-rhubarb crisp. Life is
I spent several of my formative years in the City of Soft-Pretzel-y-Love. Not the fancy, cheese-filled mall variety, or the bake-at-home frozen blandness, but the soft, chewy, salty Philadelphia Pretzel, preferably from a germ-laden street vendor's cart and drizzled, of course, with mustard. Nothing ever tastes as good as memory makes it, so for over thirty years I have been making do.
Enter Facebook. Bear with me here, it's a convoluted story.
It all began, for me, when Janet joined Facebook. I no longer remember what brought her, reluctantly, to that point, but she had so much fun re-connecting with old friends that she persuaded me to join as well. The connecting-with-old-friends bit only works if one's friends are also on Facebook, which is much less likely for folks of my age, but nonetheless I've made a few enjoyable connections. As a whole I find the Facebook package more annoying than not, but can put up with it for the few gems it tosses my way.
Like the inspiration for this post. This summer I met a friend of my son-in-law-to-be. Enjoyable as our time together was, we are far apart both generationally and geographically, and in the old days the chances of her sharing a recipe with me would have been nil. But she is on Facebook, and graciously accepted my "friend request," the result of which is that when she posted a video on pretzel-making, I found it. There are actually two in the series:
It is a very good thing we do not have cable television. Put me in front of a food channel and I might not move all day. Other shows by this guy are proving a major temptation getting in the way of progress this week. "This guy" is Alton Brown, and his show, Good Eats, is on the Food Network (whatever that is). Some related links: One set of shows on YouTube, another set of shows on YouTube, and the fan page. (I spent a fair amount of time trying to determine the legality or lack thereof of having the shows posted on YouTube, without success, but they've been there for quite awhile without being removed, and one of the posters runs the fan site and knows the chef, so I'm feeling free to enjoy them unless convinced otherwise.)
After all the preliminaries...ta da! What I Did Yesterday: I made the pretzels! It was easy! Dark brown, shiny, chewy, and exceedingly delicious, with or without mustard.
Did I say they were good? I mean really, really good. Even without the umibacillus vendorophilus.
