finger painting

Spending an entire day with Andrew included making soft pretzels that reminded me of children's picture books.

It was perhaps the most straight forward recipe from here.  However we lacked a thermometer, which probably affected the outcome because the shaped dough didn't double in size as it was supposed to.

Got the turtle idea from here.  So cute.  Looks like it's swimming on the sea, the sea with the sun reflecting off of the surface.  My moment of artsy.

I am the more childish one who made the turtles, snail, and butterfly whilst Andrew took a more traditional route.  Go figure.
The coils make the "animals" look elementary, and I'm reminded of one exhibit I saw at the NC Museum of Art(Fins and Feathers) that basically looked like finger paintings to me, and I can never get over how cute those sorts of things are, that very simple, messy, colorful style.  ...like the Hungry Caterpillar!

We didn't have a pastry brush, so we dumped the egg wash over the pretzels and this is what happened.  They turned out more bread-like than pretzel-like if you know what I mean, but I ate about nine of them regardless.

Mmm yes, pretzel tower.

Explororizing Raleigh:

Humble Pie and Neomonde.
Yummy.

I had the wild mushroom gnocchi.  So dense.  So thick with sauce.  Every bite consisted of a pillow-y dumpling, a mushroom slice, and a piece of the crispy parmesan.

Andrew's braised short rib tostadas were the perfect Mexican bite.  I have been craving Mexican food for awhile recently.  The one time I'll ever miss New Mexico...  And I appreciate that the salsa was spicy.  If you're going to serve something spicy... make it spicy.  

Neomonde was not at all what we expected.  The pastries were Mediterranean and more of the flakey variety rather than cakes and cookies and... cinnamon rolls (as Andrew wanted).  But I didn't expect there to be an ethnic market alongside the bakery.  I couldn't read half of the stuff but I procured rose water, which two weeks ago baffled me as to where I would obtain such a think, and I found Armenian string cheese (pictured above), which I thought looked funny.  It would've been a more successful trip if we had gone there for dinner because the bakery was more of a deli, but I still got my rose water.