Day Off Cooking

What do you do with a day off? You sleep in (whee!), go out to breakfast (double-whee!) and then cook (triple-whee!) Triple-whee is actually appropriate because we tried three new recipes (and 3 fun kitchen gadgets) in a single afternoon.

The first: soft pretzels. We followed this New York Times recipe but shaped the pretzels in snail-shell spirals like Vortex does. (And like Vortex does, we served them with nacho cheese sauce.) Working with lye was a little scary, but the results were totally worth it -- we'll be making them again. I mean, what else will I do with 2 pounds of lye? (Suggestions welcome...) Kitchen gadget #1 -- the KitchenAid mixer that made quick work of the dough.


The second and third: ice cream. A giant box arrived the other day -- it was an unexpected wedding gift from longtime friends of my parents. It contained kitchen gadget #2: a super-nifty ice cream maker. We made strawberry ice cream from One Hot Stove (employing kitchen gadget #3: a food processor) and then the double-chocolate peanut butter ice cream that Nupur linked to in her post. We followed the strawberry recipe exactly, and added a few tablespoons of marshmallow Fluff along with the peanut butter to the chocolate ice cream.


All in all, a lovely day, with lots of yummy food :)