rachel’s blog

The other night I mentioned to someone that I had made bagels for the first time over Easter weekend.

“Soft bagels?” she asked.

Apparently she had pretzels on her mind. Unfortunately, it happened to be a very appropriate question. Bagels are supposed to be soft and chewy, but I managed to bake a not-so-soft batch of the World’s Chewiest Bagels. I wouldn’t exactly call them tough… just ridiculously chewy. They tasted good and the process was fun, but the overall outcome left a bit to be desired.

Ever since writing “make bagels” on my list of 101 Things in 1001 Days, I’ve been hoping to find someone who has made them before who could give me some tips. No luck. People think it’s a great idea, and they’ve all said that if I learn how to make bagels, they want my recipe and advice.

(This feels like a weird, inverse version of the Little Red Hen. Nobody said, “I’d love to help you eat the disappointing results of your bagel experiments,” but everyone wants to enjoy the final results of my quest to master the art of bagel-making.)

Lacking a bagel tutor and finding exactly zero recipes for bagels in my cookbook collection, I headed to the internet. As expected, my Google search yielded too many bagel recipes. I didn’t have a clue which recipe would lead to the perfect bagel, so I just looked through a few recipes and picked one.

In spite of the variations in recipes, the basic process is pretty standard. You create a batch of dough, knead it, and let it rise. Next you shape it into round balls, poke your thumb through the middle, and try to get it to look like a bagel.

How did I do? That’s what they looked like after letting them rise again. Next you cook them in a pot of boiling water for a few minutes. It’s kind of like making donuts, except that donuts are boiled in oil — a.k.a. deep fat fried. Different bagel recipes indicate different lengths of time for the boiling, so I’ll have to experiment with that.

Next you brush the bagels with egg yolk (to make them shiny), add seasonings if desired, and bake them. The recipe I used said to bake the bagels for 35-40 minutes. I checked them after 25 minutes and they were already overbaked.

Looks can be deceiving. They’re beautifully golden brown, but eating them gives your jaw a workout. Next time I won’t bake them as long! Once I’ve come up with a good basic bagel recipe, I’d like to experiment with different kinds of dough. Eventually I’d like to be able to replicate my favorite bagel from the local bagel shop — a sundried tomato spinach bagel. Mmm.

Was it a map of Uzbekistan or a slice of bread? It was hard to tell. Unfortunately, it was indeed a slice from the Most Pitiful Loaf of Rye Bread ever made. I baked it yesterday afternoon, and needless to say, the recipe did not find its way to my list of the seven great recipes I’ve made during the first seven days of 2008.

I think I need a bread-baking tutor. Seriously. I’ve attempted to make bread a number of times, and it just never turns out like I want it to. Yesterday’s rye bread adventure was particularly disastrous. Edible, but just barely. I keep thinking that if I just try a different recipe, it will go better. (Practice makes perfect, right?) After yesterday, I’m beginning to reconsider that logic.

Besides the run-in with the deformed rye bread, I’m loving my new year’s resolution to “expand my culinary repertoire.” Already I’ve spent quite a few hours poring over cookbooks, peeking in my cupboards, scouring the internet, and digging through the freezer. The results have been quite tasty, ranging from Moroccan carrots on New Year’s Day to curried pumpkin soup this evening.

Believe it or not, my favorite new recipe is for lima beans. Lima beans! (I found the recipe for “lemony lima beans with parmesan” in a back issue of Everyday Food magazine, but you can also find it here). I only made a half recipe, and I still ended up with four servings. To my delight, I quickly discovered that with a little olive oil, lemon juice, and parmesan cheese, lima beans really ARE good!

Unlike my neighbors who were hootin’ and hollerin’ and blowing those little party horns, I spent the first few minutes of 2008 standing calmly on the sidewalk in front of my house. Earlier in the evening I had walked downtown for some First Night festivities, and then some friends and I came back to my house to hang out. I own a TV that’s rarely plugged in, so we weren’t watching the televised Times Square hoopla. Instead we walked outside just before midnight, listened to my neighbors chanting inside their house (seven, six, five…), and watched the fireworks. Ooo. Ahh.

After considering several possible New Year’s Resolutions, I’ve finally decided on just one resolution for 2008: expand my culinary repertoire. I love to cook, but somehow I’ve managed to become stuck in a culinary rut. No longer. Bon appetit!

I realize that October is an odd time to be thinking about New Year’s Resolutions, but I’m happy to report that I’m still making progress on my resolutions for 2007. Of the three resolutions I made on January 1, only one is public… and it’s my favorite: “do new things.”

So today I went fishing. I know what some of you are thinking. “What? Your dad never took you fishing?!” Um, no. My dad doesn’t fish. In fact, the idea of him loading a tackle box and fishing pole into the trunk of his car just seems really comical to me. It’s about as likely as him grabbing his hypothetical gun and tromping out into the bitter cold to try to shoot a deer or something. It just isn’t gonna happen. Fortunately, there are plenty of other hobbies in the world to choose from.

But I digress. This afternoon I went with a group of friends to a stocked pond in West Virginia where I managed to catch eight fish. I learned how to cast and reel ‘em in, but there were some other parts of the process I chose not to experience first-hand… Maybe another time. The person in our group who caught the most was Dannel (that’s not a typo, he’s Cuban) — and he fished without a pole! He just had a hook on the end of some fishing line. He’d twirl it like a lasso and cast it out into the water, and before long he’d be pulling in another fish. Amazing.

When we got home, we had a fish fry. Mmm-mm! And now I have three fresh fish (sans head, guts, and scales) in my fridge. Pushing myself to do new things can have some yummy results…

Last night I received an email from a woman at my church inviting others to join her for an impromptu “quilting bee” at church this evening. When I read the email, I said to myself, “Self, you’re a Mennonite woman. You should know how to quilt.” But that wasn’t the end of the discussion. I had to convince my Inner Non-Conformist that since very few of my peers know how to quilt, learning to quilt would actually be an act of non-conformity.

I checked with the coordinator to see if it would be OK for me to learn on this quilt… and it was. So I spent an hour and a half this evening learning to quilt. After a while I started getting the hang of it enough that I could actually quilt and talk at the same time. Can you tell that I’m an extrovert?

* The title of this post is from Isaiah 43:19. Just for the record, I am not the Lord, and I’m pretty sure the prophet Isaiah didn’t know how to quilt. :o)

My New Year’s Resolution to “do new things” may have subsconsciously been part of the reason that I developed my 101-in-1001 list. Many of the things on the list are new for me, and five of the six things I accomplished in February fall into the “new” category. But when I made my New Year’s resolution, I expected that the new things I do would be more life-changing than simply releasing a book through BookCrossing or sending a letter to the Presidente de la República de Guatemala (my Amnesty International activity).

As I reflect on the month of February, which ends tonight after a mere 28 days, I really can’t think of anything I’ve done that has pushed me beyond my typical routine in a significant way. Of course, it doesn’t help that for 10 of those 28 days (and nights), I’ve had to stay within 5-10 minutes of home and be ready to drop whatever I’m doing at a moment’s notice. It’s a job thing… but I can’t blame all of my stuck-in-a-rut tendencies on my job.

Since I haven’t been going out of my way to do new things, I’ve had to think creatively to come up with a list of new things I’ve done in the month of February. Here it is:

* I got to know someone from New Hampshire. I’ve been to the Granite State at least twice in my life, but until recently I wasn’t personally acquainted with anyone who lives there. Now I am.

* I tried a new waffle recipe. Until a few weeks ago, I always used the same recipe every time I made waffles, but when I invited a friend over for breakfast to celebrate her birthday, I decided to make pumpkin waffles instead. Mmm. They were so good…

* I drove a golf cart. Seriously, I think today was the first time I drove one, but what made the experience memorable is that I was wearing “drunk goggles,” which simulate vision impairment caused by intoxication. Believe it or not, this was a work thing too.

As my faithful readers already know, one of my resolutions for 2007 is to do new things. Unfortunately, the new things I have done so far this year have been incredibly underwhelming. (Yes, that’s a real word.) The only new thing I have done so far in February is to order books online… and I only did that because I had a gift card. My two books arrived today in a box that could have held a dozen more.

One of the books I ordered was “Show Me the Way: Daily Lenten Readings” by Henri Nouwen. That’s really all I know about the book, but since I have appreciated several of Nouwen’s other books, I have no doubt that this one will be meaningful as well. The reading for each day includes scripture, two meditations (selected from 15 of Nouwen’s 40 books), and prayer. For those who are not aware, Lent begins on Ash Wednesday (a little over two weeks from now) and concludes on Easter Sunday.

Would you be interested in joining me on this Lenten journey? If you’re looking for a new spiritual practice to engage in during Lent, I invite you to buy “Show Me the Way” and read it while I do. I’d be interested in discussing the book with others who are reading it, but even if you decide not to join me, I may occasionally share my thoughts and reflections on it here and invite your response.

January has been at least two months long.

Seriously. It has lasted forever! A week and a half ago I felt like it should be February already… and it’s STILL January! Unbelievable. Rumor has it that tomorrow is the last day of January, but considering how long the month has been already, I’m having trouble believing it. If February ever does decide to show up, I might need to host a January-Is-Finally-Over party or something.

Since January has been extra-long this year, I’ve had plenty of time to come up with theories to explain its perpetual existence. For example, maybe all of the calendar-makers held a secret meeting last year to develop a comprehensive plan to play a mean trick on the world. Or maybe people have been adding extra pages to my calendar when I wasn’t looking. Why couldn’t they add them to June instead? (Side note: yes, I use a pencil and paper to keep track of my life. Anyone want an obsolete antique Palm VIIx that I got for free?) Or perhaps February simply went on strike to prevent January from morphing into February.

It’s not that January has been so terrible… just interminable. Sometimes when life is full the days fly by, but not this month. Each day and each week have stretched out as far as possible… and then some. I spent the first day of January with my family at the end of our Christmas/New Year’s holiday time together, and then I spent the first weekend on a retreat (it was for work, but it was lovely nonetheless). Since then, my life has been jam-packed with all kinds of things — working hard, having friends over for dinner, going to basketball games, enjoying my friends’ babies, playing music for worship on a Steinway concert grand, rejoicing with my friend who started dating a woman he REALLY likes, procrastinating and then doing work for the seminary class I’m taking, singing in a choir again, and getting too little sleep. That’s not an exhaustive list, of course… just an exhausting one.

I mentioned in a previous blog entry that one of my New Year’s Resolutions is to do new things… and I have been. During the past month, I ate at a new Thai restaurant, started a new blog (this one!), bought a tampon out of a machine for the first time (sorry, guys!), and visited a new church. I also started meeting weekly for conversation with a young Korean woman who is learning English. I know, that’s an incredibly exciting list. Stay tuned for next month’s installment…

-sigh-

January has been good, but I can’t say I’m sad to see it go.