I'm not sure how my creative partner Christina does it but she can hone into one topic, one image each week. I on the other hand can never just choose one image. This week I want to tell you a little story about homemade pretzels. Seems kind of crazy a little story about pretzels and it does happen to include mindfulness. This is how the story goes....
I was visiting my sister out in the desert, her name is Sarah. We got to talking about how awesome it is to make our own treats as we were baking homemade banana bread together. This way we know exactly what we put into our food. She mentioned she wanted to try and make homemade soft pretzels and I thought to myself, "hum, that seems kind of hard and crazy, I've never thought about making my own soft pretzels before. On our drive home I looked up EASY soft pretzels on the web. The word EASY is key. I found this recipe and this is the ONE I USED . We tried it within a few days of my conversation with Sarah and we kind of rushed through the recipe but we had what I would like to call beginners luck. They were OK and did seem easy. Easy enough to try again a few weeks later. The second time was a complete disaster. I was rushing through it just like the first time, doing a few things at once, cooking dinner, doing dishes you know what they call multi tasking. The second time felt stressful because I just wanted to get it done and done quick. I forgot to knead the dough completely, I burnt two fingers in the boiling water, the texture/consistency was terrible, they didn't stay together in the boiling water. The family members brave enough to taste them thought they were yucky. They ended up in the trash.
Which comes to the 3rd attempt. My mom always told me "if at first you don't succeed, try again" I don't give up easy anyway on lots of things. Remember my crane folding story? This time I read the recipe all the way through once. Then I calmly and with great intent went through each step. The past two times I got the water boiling too quick and felt a pressure to get those babies in the water. This time after Abbie kneaded the dough and it was resting for 10 minutes I started the large pot of water and pre-heated the oven. We just took our time, enjoyed each step, even danced a little in the kitchen and WAA-LA! The most perfect batch yet and yes they are EASY, if you just take your time and don't get all panicky about it. Another lesson in being mindful. I'm constantly learning these little lessons on how I need to slow it down and enjoy the process. I'm so curious what 22 LIMES was up to this past week, what did she see?