Wordless Wednesday: Beer & Brats

Tags

Austin, Austin Beerworks, beer, brats, Domain, Texas, WFMdomain, Whole Foods

Brats Banh Mi + Sputnik

Mr. Sparkle! (Austin Beerworks Pilsner + MAGIC)

Whole Foods opened their fifth(!) Austin location at the Domain today. Last week they held a happy hour for bloggers at Austin Beerworks to preview some of their food offerings. (There was also barbeque shrimp and gumbo that was tasty, but not very photogenic.)

Pretzel Perseverance

Tags

baking, beer cheese, bread, German, pretzels, yeast

When my friend Jill proposed baking cupcakes or something together in lieu of exchanging Christmas gifts, I asked if we could make pretzels. Rarely am I so decisive, but they’ve been on my to-bake list and I know that she likes to bake bread, too. (Also, we made cupcakes for my 30th.) This ended up happening on New Year’s Eve at the house of our friends Julie and Andrew in San Antonio. They were having a party that evening, so it seemed like a good idea to do it all in one day.

The pretzel-making got off to a late start due to (my) poor planning and traffic, but it didn’t sound like they would take too much time. We were using Alton Brown’s recipe which looked pretty basic, but the first step of proofing the yeast seemed odd: he says to put the salt in with the water, yeast, and sugar. Our yeast didn’t get very foamy, so we were worried the salt killed it, but went ahead anyway and let the dough rise while we ate dinner.

Wordless Wednesday: Cheers!

Tags

New Year's Eve, Wordless Wednesday

Zazie, or who I had my arms around at midnight.

Happy New Year!