Pretzels and Strudel

Guten Tag! Oktoberfest, the annual Bavarian celebration, was canceled this year. And it's not as if we would have been there anyway. But we need cheer and revelry and something to distract ourselves from the world's chaos, now more than ever, and thus my backup dancers and I have just celebrated Mocktoberfest two weekends in a row, with one family at a time as guests, in our back yard. Everyone was masked unless eating or drinking, at which point our families kept our distance to be safe.

I was a German minor in college, and I spent a school year studying abroad in Salzburg, Austria. So I have Mocktoberfest street cred.

Back in the day. The Austrian hills were alive with the sound of music.

This blog is about reducing our meat consumption as a way to make an individual contribution to fighting climate change. So forgive us for serving real sausages alongside fake ones (I like the Beyond brand sausages), but we practice "meat as a treat" on special occasions.

We also enjoyed German beer and oompah music, and I made soft pretzels (King Arthur Baking Company) and apple strudel (Taste of Home), both of which turned out great and could function on their own if you are seeking just vegetarian options.

Regarding the pretzels, my advice is to make the strings a lot longer and thinner than you might think, or your pretzels will just be blobs when they come out of the oven, which is what happened with my first batch:

Pretzels not rolled thin enough

Blobs. Still delicious, but not ideal.

I did better on my second batch:

But I somehow missed the correct temperature to cook the pretzels, so they weren't brown enough. By my third attempt, I had finally mastered the pretzels:

Perfection

The strudel turned out well and wasn't difficult. The recipe makes two "logs" and I froze the second one, then defrosted and baked it a week later, and it was just as good as the one baked immediately.

I told my sister about our Oktoberfest plans, and she decided to do it too. Doesn't their food look delicious?

We found an Oktoberfest channel on Pandora for our soundtrack. Here are some more ideas for music selections for your celebration:

• https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYB0fUimRUZLAYTWIKoKn3A
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mXpgqh_SROE
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AkmcGNqYfPY
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2FDKnDsWYik
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWOUi0PVTXw

My long-ago trip to Munich's Hofbrauhaus (not during Oktoberfest, hence the lack of other revelers!)