Pretzel, pretzel, who wants a pretzel??

So a few weeks back was the Red River Shoot Out - for those who don't know this is the football game between the University of Texas at Austin and some other school......you know those red people....ug...the University of Oklahoma.

So per tradition me and my best friends from college got together for the weekend to watch the game, hang out, catch up (and eventually console each other over the horrendous loss we suffered in that day game....ug...)

Everyone was bringing something, snacks, drinks, etc, and we were going to cook out for lunch and dinner.  Well here's the thing...

I HATE COOKING.

Cooking in my mind is akin to torture. 

Srsly. 

But I do love to bake and have realized the hand kneading and punching dough is a fabulous stress reliever!  So I made mini pretzel bites using a recipe from the Curvy Carrot (my new favorite cooking/baking blog!)

 

I decided to double the recipe since so many people were going to be at the game watching party but then ended up with so much dough and didn't think I needed to make 150+ pretzel bites so I made me a cinnamon sugar full sized pretzel and it was awesome!!!

 

Of course the down side to baking....THE DISHES!! 

Again please excuse the photography - I didn't finish making this till almost 1 am, so it was dark and I couldn't find my camera and just used my iphone.

WARNING - these things are best eaten immediately. They did not last well until the next day which was totally sad. In hind sight, I think of course they ended up as rock hard little dough nuggets, the salt zapped all the moisture right out of them!!! But why didn't I think of that then?? *facepalm*

Too much of a good thing??

Woah. Today has been awesome.

I took Betty on a bike ride today. Went 8.25 miles which was great, but going from 11:30 to 12:30 pm when it was over 100 degrees outside wasn't exactly my brightest idea ever.

Yesterday I finished my Jane Austen mini quilt for Suzanne, but after binding it I realized I must have bound it too tightly because the edges were curling up. Since I wasn't happy with how the binding print ended up looking anyways I decided to redo, so I went to our new Joann's in search of the perfect black pin dot and found it. Monday this little baby should be ready to mail out!

Then this evening I decided to make some homemade white bread from the Curvy Carrot which I found via Eleganitis who had the best photos of what the bread should look like when you hand knead it. I decided to do it by hand after realizing the recipe made way more dough than my artisan could handle at once (and it doesn't help that I forgot about the lock for the head...)

Once it was all kneaded I had to wait for what seemed like forever for it to rise.

But patience proved to be worth it once these beauties came out of the oven.

Once it cooled just a smidge it didn't take long to slice and devour it!

And holy cow was it good!!!

Especially as a muenster cheese grilled cheese sandwich with tomato basil soup! And tomorrow I am thinking french toast is a MUST.

And I have realized you can never have too much of a good thing - that is until you eat so much you feel sick! LOL!