Today was our third wedding anniversary. However, without thinking, we scheduled this month’s Young Adults gathering for tonight (since this was one of the few nights that would work for everyone involved). So instead of doing anything romantic for our anniversary, we simply postponed the anniverary dinner for tomorrow night, and instead, this morning before work I stirred up three huge batches of dough for homemade pretzels, and then after work and a house call by the veterinarian (which I’ll talk about later) we headed off to the church to get things ready.

‘Getting things ready’ mainly involved me rolling out one batch of the pretzels and setting them off to rise, since I figured we’d be better off having some cooking when the others showed up. They all did show up, one by one, some with kids and some without, and we all stood around in the kitchen and rolled out pretzels. The first few pans were traditional pretzel shapes, but I knew that wouldn’t last, and sure enough, by the time we’d reached the end of the dough the pans were full of mostly non-pretzel shaped pretzels.

It was supposed to be a potluck dinner but that didn’t exactly pan out. So Richard was sent off to the store to get cheese and fruit and when he returned, the first batch was just coming out of the oven. We dragged a few tables together, set the men to cutting up fruit and cheese, and then commenced with the eating.

Homemade pretzels, fruit and cheese had been one of those ‘company’ meals in my family as long as I can remember, since it’s hard to remain strangers with people when you’re all gathered around a table, hands coated liberally in flour, rolling out dough. I figured since there were a few newbies to our little group it would work out the same for them as well, and happily it did. Between the dozen or so of us that came we managed to inhale almost the entire three batches, and a good amount of the fruit and cheese as well. There were only a few left to take home, and I passed out copies of the recipe to a few of the others. Everyone pitched in to clean up the kitchen (and we all kept nibbling pretzels). It may not have been a romantic dinner for two, but it was a lot of fun, and we all got the chance to get to know a few of the newer members of the group, and we all ate a lot of pretzels and I am not sure which part of that was the best part of the whole evening, since it is kind of hard to choose when homemade pretzels are involved.