The Perfect Pretzel

Pretzels are not really part of the Belgian culture, but they are a staple in the United States. Mark loves them and used to buy them – the small, hard ones – in bags from the grocery store. He would look at the ingredients and purchase the cheapest ones without preservatives and crap in them. They are a great snack and even though I prefer potato chips, I do like the combination of salty peanuts and pretzels; a great mix! I have seen the big, soft pretzels as well, at fairs or sports games. They come warm and are served as a yummy snack with mustard.

Why all this talk about pretzels, when they are surely not to be found in Kuna land? As a matter of fact, any decent snacks are absent on the islands here (we can’t even find the hard corn to make popcorn) and in most other parts of the Caribbean they are very expensive. We have thought about making potato chips, but that seems to be a big project and hassle and we don’t have the right burners to heat oil for such things. We did find some cheap, “healthy” chips in Curaçao, but they are long gone and… Mark misses pretzels.

Recently, he had the great idea to make soft pretzels. He found a good recipe and went to work. I helped a little bit here and there and about two hours later, twelve wonderfully browned and salted pretzels appeared out of the oven! They are the best ones we ever had and we are now proud to add tasty golden pretzels to our list of home-made food of Irie. They join the breads, pizzas, English muffins, fries, onion rings, rum cakes, banana breads, hamburgers, many spreads and flavorful, varied and interesting dishes for dinner. Maybe we should start a restaurant, a pizzeria or a bakery whenever/if ever we settle on land…