Why Bother??? 2012 - Soft Pretzels

Shopping malls.  Sporting arenas.  A street corner in New York City.  An odd collection of places, but they are some of the only places that you can find a soft pretzel.  Sweet and salty, yeasty and warm, soft pretzels are one of the food items that you would rarely think to make on your own.  These huge pretzels are among the only reasons that I like going to sporting events.  Especially baseball games.  I have many memories of sharing a box of soft preztel bites with my mom and these memories also have to do with sporting events too.

Back in the days of the early nineties, the Buffalo Bills were a football team to be reckoned with.  In those years, we had Jim Kelly, Bruce Smith, Steve Tasker, Thurman Thomas and Andre Reed, all under the direction of Marv Levy.  You'll remember that I am indifferent to football these days, which means that these guys were a big deal, because I remember their names to this day.  The dream team went to the super bowl four times in four years.  They also had one devoted fan, my dad.

He would hunker down every Sunday in front of the big screen (or the radio) and watch his team fight their way to victory.  In the years of the dream team, wins outnumbered losses and it was a happy time.  Unfortunately, the dream eventually faded and we were left with a team that was recovering from the retirement of many of its stars.  The win-loss record suffered and so did their fans.

In the years of awakening, those sad years after 1995, the Buffalo fans held out hope that their team could rebuild and return to their old glory.  Those of you who follow football know this, Buffalo has yet to return to those dream win-loss records.  Sundays of those post-1995 years were spent escaping the house, running from the game and hiding from the darkness it brought over the house.  Football meant sadness and depression (and yelling and the TV). 

To escape the football fog, my mom and I would head out Sunday afternoons.  We would hit the mall and shop to our hearts content.  Trying on clothes, looking at sparkly jewelry, but mostly just enjoying some time together.  At the end of each shopping trip, we would head to the pretzel stand and get a pack of pretzel bites.  I'd get the nacho cheese and mom would get the cheddar.  These buttery little bites of bread would be the prefect end to our escape day. 

The decision to make soft pretzels at this time of the year was motivated by the upcoming Super Bowl.  Of the two recipes I tried out, I preferred the buttery mall pretzels.  The boiled pretzels just didn't turn out like I wanted them.  My verdict on this challenge?  It was totally worth it to make these guys.  They didn't take nearly as long as I thought they would and were completely delicious.  I think that I can skip the mall pretzels now, because these were just as good. 

I was unable to replicate the stadium pretzel.  This just means that 1. I'll have to keep trying and 2. I'll have to keep going to sporting events until I get it right!  Let's go BUFFALO!

Creamy Vegetable Soup

I have been trying to decide what to share with you today, then I realized that all of the recipes that I made this weekend either consisted of soup or pretzels.  And since pretzels are delegated for Thursdays post, I am giving you some more delicious soup!  I have been quickly going through my stock of stocks (hah!) because of one person.  Boyfriend.

Boyfriend has come down with some sort of fever-raising, cough-inducing sickness, brought on by the below-human temperatures that exist in his office.  I think that many people deal with the same thing at this time of year, especially if you work in an office and most definitely if you work in a lab.  These two environments are not good at regulating temperatures.  Office buildings are broken up into little rooms and it is unlikely that there will be a heat register in each office.  This means that some offices are a million degrees and some offices are freezing cold.

The same hot/cold situation exists in most lab spaces as well, but for a completely different reason.  Chemists work inside of hoods, which are basically like your oven hood, except our hoods are completely enclosed and have doors that raise and lower like a garage door.  These hoods pull air in from the lab space and send it out through the filters on the roof.  The rate of air being pulled out of the lab isn't always matched by the amount of air replaced by the heaters.  Hence, the labs and offices get pretty chilly.

Look how thick and delicious!!!

I have the ability to throw on an additional sweater under my labcoat, where boyfriend has to look like a business guy and not wear layers of jackets around the office.  Therefore he gets chilly and lowers his defenses to the cold and flu viruses floating about in the office.  Then he gets sick and I feed him lots of vegetables and vitamins!

Country Sausage Pasta

I have been enjoying a week with very few things on my calendar.  My meeting reminder has only been going off about once a day and I was even able to ignore the ones from yesterday!  It's a nice change from last week, where I had meetings non-stop from Monday through Wednesday.  This quiet calendar week also comes with perfect timing as I am crazy busy with lab work right now!

It hasn't been since I was a postdoc that I've had this much time to spend in the lab and my feet are wondering what I'm doing!  At this very moment, I am transitioning from one project to another.  The only problem is that I'm not quite finished with the first project and I need to dive right into the second one.  So this means that I'm working double duty to try and make both project leaders happy.

Luckily my multi-tasking skills haven't atrophied since I left Connecticutt.  I've been running reactions, purifications and analysis, all at the same time, over the past few days.  This makes me happy, I like seeing reactions stirring in my hood and I like checking the analytical data and seeing that I have indeed made what I wanted to.  Let's share a happy moment from earlier this week, with a little background information.

As a non-chemist, you may imagine me in my lab, surrounded by multi-colored beakers and flasks, all bubbling away.  Steam pours out of the reactions and there are miscellaneous coils full of colorful liquid in the background.  Dry ice bubbles in water baths, white smoke pouring from the bowls.  Bunsen burners alight with their blue flames, heating reactions and making chemistry happen.

Sadly, none of the above is true.  Firstly, nobody uses beakers.  I keep my dirty stir bars and spatulae in them.  Secondly, and most sadly, organic chemistry is a science with very little color.  If you want to see reds, blues and greens, become an inorganic chemist.  Everything in organic chemistry is either clear or yellow or light yellow or if you're really lucky, bright yellow.  It's so sad...  Which is why my week was made on Tuesday afternoon while running a new reaction.

The chemicals were added together at -78 C (that's cold) and slowly warmed to room temperature.  The reaction started off yellow (of course) but as the temperature warmed, magic in a flask happened.  The reaction turned blood red!  As it got closer to room temperature is lightened and eventually settled on a bright pink hue.  It was seriously pink, like I took a My Little Pony and stuck it in a blender pink.  I was so sad to add water to the reaction to end it, where in it turned back to boring old yellow.