Apron Strings

Carolyn was kind enough to send along her twisted tale of bak­ing pret­zels. If you haven’t shared your story about the worst fam­ily cook­ing expe­ri­ence EVER,  it’s not too late. Share your pain, embar­rass your fam­ily and friends and win a gift cer­tifi­cate to Fiesta. Now that’s a win-win-win.

Okay, I need to admit right up front that I was not the most patient of chil­dren, and then as far as I was con­cerned, I could do any­thing an adult could — some­times even better.

I have dis­tinct mem­o­ries of learn­ing to cook, work­ing along­side my mom, help­ing her fol­low the recipes in her favourite cook­books. I remem­ber the first time I made din­ner by myself when I put in 5 cloves of gar­lic before any­body told me that one clove was one sec­tion and not one bulb, I remem­ber stuff­ing cheese into meat­balls in attempt to outdo my mom’s spaghetti and meat­balls, and I remem­ber the first time I tried bak­ing alone.

I wasn’t sup­posed to be bak­ing alone. My mom and I had planned to try a pret­zel recipe out of my favourite kids cook­book. But she was busy out­side chat­ting with the neigh­bours, and as I men­tioned, I was that unfor­tu­nate com­bi­na­tion of over-confident and impa­tient. By the time she came inside, I had fol­lowed through the recipe and had the pret­zels ready for the oven. My mom helped me apply the egg­wash, and I waited eagerly while they baked to a beau­ti­ful brown. When they came out, my mom sprin­kled them with salt and we waited for them to be cool enough to eat.

Finally, I took my first bite. And instead of joy and pride I felt con­fu­sion. This is def­i­nitely not what pret­zels were sup­posed to taste like. My mom took a bite and made that face that moms make when they’re try­ing to pre­tend you’ve done a won­der­ful job when you both know you haven’t. Then my older brother came run­ning through the kitchen, grab­bing a pret­zel and just as quickly spit­ting it into the sink. Without hes­i­ta­tion he declared my pret­zels ‘gross’. I burst into tears, and my mom read through the recipe look­ing for what went wrong. It didn’t take her long to fig­ure it out.

“How much salt did you add,” she asked. “Just what the recipe said,” I wailed. With a lit­tle more prod­ding, she fig­ured out the error of my ways. I have never been good at read­ing a recipe through before cook­ing it, and my first foray into bak­ing was no excep­tion. The recipe called for 1/4 of salt, 1 tsp for the dough and the rest to sprin­kled over top. I missed the part about divid­ing the salt and put the whole 1/4 cup into the dough, result­ing in pret­zels that were an ined­i­ble mess.

It was my first bak­ing dis­as­ter, but it cer­tainly wasn’t my last. While I can cook savoury dishes that con­sis­tently wow the crowd, the need for patience and pre­ci­sion in bak­ing has always eluded me.