Dave worked late last night so I decided to go on an adventure with my new kitchen-aid mixer (best birthday gift, everrrrr!).

I LOVE soft pretzels but have always felt that it's too much work to make them at home.  Turns out, there are a lot of steps making it feel like work but the results were worth it for me.  I couldn't wouldn't have done this without the stand mixer.  Even though it only would have been 5-7 minutes of hand kneading, ain't nobody got time for that.  Being able to slap on that dough hook and let it do the work for me was a major bonus.


I'm not going to type out the recipe, you can find it here.  I pretty much followed it exactly except I used the brown sugar instead of barley malt syrup (who has that anyway?).  Also, I only had kosher salt so I used that which is why you can't see the salt on my pretzels.  But trust me, it's there.  The salt is probably my favorite part of the pretzel.  From start to eat, these pretzels took me a little less than 2 hours.  But, half of that time was letting the dough rest. 


I enjoyed rolling out the dough and doing the pretzel flip like I used to love watching at Auntie Anne's.  I think next time I'll either do bites or twists.  Or maybe make a couple bigger ones.  The options are endless!

Happy pretzeling!

I'm blessed with a husband who can cook, and chili is one of his specialties that he has taught me! We love to make this chili, especially during the fall and winter.

So, I don't really ever call this "Choose Your Own Adventure Chili", but as I was making it the other day I realized that you really can make this recipe in so many ways, it may as well be choose your own adventure!  I'm sharing the recipe as I made it recently and along the way I'll let you know where you can change it up (which is pretty much everywhere)!

Ingredients:

• 1 lb. ground venison (or less. or more. or shredded. or cubed. or beef. or chicken. or turkey. or none. you get the point.
• 1 onion (or none. or 2. whatever)
• any combination of any peppers you like, this time I used:
• 1 green bell pepper
• 2 anaheim peppers 
• 1 jalapeno pepper

1 can (14-15 oz.) of each:

• diced tomatoes
• sliced stewed tomatoes
• red kidney beans (drained and rinsed)
• black eyed peas (drained and rinsed)
• black beans (drained and rinsed)
• chili beans
• small can tomato paste (and I usually only use half of it)

The number of cans of tomatoes and beans is totally up to you.  Sometimes I use baked beans, butter beans, pinto beans, whatevvvvvvv.  I just use what we have on hand or what's on sale.  I typically stick with 2-3 cans of tomatoes (diced or stewed), and 4-6 cans of beans.

Spices - you can alter the amounts of all of these, but I really think the combination of them is what gives that good chili flavor.  So, even if you don't like it spicy, a dash of cayenne isn't going to hurt anyone.  I gave a mild suggestion for measurements.

• Salt (1 tsp)
• Pepper (1/2 tsp)
• Cayenne (1/2 tsp)
• Cumin (2 tsp)
• Oregano (1 tsp)
• Chili powder (1 tbsp)
• Garlic powder (1 tsp)

Chop the onion and peppers, toss into a skillet with some olive oil, salt and pepper.
(or don't. I'd suggest chopping them, but you don't have to cook them first if you don't want.)

Brown the meat, Open (and drain/rinse if necessary) all cans of tomatoes and beans (except the paste!), dump them all into a crock pot.

Add the onion, peppers, and meat to the crock pot.  Add the spices.  Stir.
Crock pot for 4-12 hours.  I try to do 6 hours on high.  If it's going to cook longer than 8 hours I put it on low.

I add half of the tomato paste about 4 hours in (or whenever is convenient), give it a good stir and taste.  Then I add more spices if I want.


And for some reason I don't have a picture of the final product...so I'll add that later!


Happy cooking!
Missy