Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Gemuetlichkeit ist...

Hello, everyone! I'm still alive, just absolutely AMAZED at how much work I have this semester--my online class is almost over (only a week and a half left!) but I'm going to do another one for the second half of the semester, so it doesn't seem like it'll let up anytime soon. On the plus side, I'll be piling up the credits and hopefully graduating at some point in my life.

In high school, I was a member of the German Club. We didn't get any credits or anything, we just hung out after school on Thursdays and learned to speak a little German. Because of this, at some point I ended up owning a shirt that said "Gemuetlichkeit ist..." and had a picture of a dancing pretzel on it. Gemuetlichkeit ist ein Bretzel.

Gemuetlichkeit is a pretty awesome word. The Germans have a lot of words for happiness, and I'm pretty sure the most common is Schadenfreude--happiness at the misfortune of others. Gemuetlichkeit refers to the type of happiness that you feel when it's cold outside and you're wrapped in a Snuggie in front of the fireplace with a mug of hot chocolate and your favorite book. It's a comfortable happiness. Thought the shirt was a joke, I think it describes a pretzel pretty well.

The point of all this, of course, is that I made pretzels. It was really easy, and the process wasn't really spectacular (make dough, shape it, drop in boiling water for a few seconds, bake, sprinkle with your desired topping) so I only have pictures of the finished product. And I'm planning on tweaking the recipe a little as they were sort of bland, so I'm not even giving you a recipe. I will, though. Once I've improved upon it.

There you go! A cinnamon and sugar covered pretzel. It tasted sort of like a bagel, so I'm wondering if I should just go for that instead. I've never used yeast before, but it seems to have worked.

I have a few things saved up in my camera to post when I get free time (hooray for buffers!) and once I've used them up I'll actually need to find time to cook again. (I think Indian food will happen soon though, and this is very exciting.)

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