I like to indulge when I have a craving. My latest craving involved ball park food. Rockie’s Stadium sells these amazing pretzels with parmesean cheese. Since I didn’t have a ticket, or the extra cash to go, I made some myself.

These are hard to resist fresh out of the oven!

Ingredients (makes 16):

• 4 teaspoons Active Dry Yeast
• 1 1/4 cups warm water
• 1 teaspoon sugar
• 5 cups all-purpose unbleached white flour (sub whole wheat for a healthier treat)
• 1 tablespoon vegetable oil
• 1/4 cups sugar
• 2 teaspoons Kosher salt

For water on stove:

• 4 cups water
• 1/4 cups baking soda

Method:

Dissolve 1 teaspoon sugar and yeast in warm water. You’ll know its ready when the yeast is bubbly. Add sugar, vegetable oil, salt, and one cup flour. Keep adding flour slowly until the dough pulls away from the sides of the mixer bowl. Knead for 5 minutes, then put it in a greased bowl in a warm spot to double in size, about 1 hour.

Punch down and turn out onto a floured surface. Divide the dough into 16 parts. Take each piece and roll it into a 20 inch long rope. Twist into a pretzel shape and boil for 2 minutes in water/baking soda mixture. Pull out and place on a greased baking sheet. Bake for 15 minutes at 400 degrees F. Remove and enjoy!

To season your pretzel: Melt 1 tablespoon butter. Brush on the pretzel, and salt lightly.

I quite enjoy these plain or lightly salted, but I was feeling extra indulgent, so this is what I did:

Instead of just using plain butter, I melted it and added in some sliced garlic until it was soft. Brushed that on my pretzel, added a little bit of salt, and some freshly grated parmesean cheese. Amazing. I had about 3 this way before I was stuffed!

How do you like your pretzels? Just salted? Garlic and parmesean, like me? Cinnamon and sugar? Something else?

I’ve been wanting to dabble in quilting for some time. I figure, I like sewing, I like blankets, I might just like sewing blankets, no?

My original intention was to take a quilting class. Apparently, everyone who wants to take a quilting class is either experienced or retired, since many shops don’t offer beginner classes (WEIRD!), and the few that did offered them during the day, while I’m at work at my 9 to 5 office job. No matter, I’ll just do it myself! Who needs a quilting class when I’ve got YouTube and tons of awesome quilting blogs (not to mention a few books about it)?

After some courage wrangling and plenty of reading, watching, planning, and dinking around with EQ5, I dove right in. Lots of painstakingly careful measuring, cutting, pinning, pressing, ironing, and sewing ensued.

Behold: My first quilt block

It’s not pressed yet in that photo, but the seams match perfectly! I’m quite chuffed. That, and rotary cutting (wow! those things are super sharp) was what kept me from just going for it in the first place.

I’m using the Children’s Delight block pattern, with a few modifications. Mainly, I changed the color placement, and used the same color for the corner blocks as for the focus block. Also, I’m using three different focus fabrics. And I made it bigger…roughly queen sized. It will be 9 x 11 blocks, for a total of 99 blocks. I currently have 18, only 81 to go!

I’ll probably dedicate some significant time to it this weekend, and see if I can’t get half of my blocks pieced. Then I have to piece the sashing, and do the border, and baste, and quilt, and bind, and I’m not sure if I’m in over my head yet or not! God, grant me peace, patience, and a well-behaved sewing machine.