Bagels: In the Raw!

Above are some raw rings of bagel dough, ready to be dropped in a large pot of boiling lightly-sugared water for a minute before being dredged in sesame seeds then baked for 20 minutes. I spent the morning making the bagel dough, 4 different kinds of mini muffins, and finishing the caramel ice cream from yesterday. Three of my closest friends from childhood came over with their respective partners and babies and just had a fantastic afternoon. The food helped, sure, but when you're so intimate and friendly with people you've known forever and don't see nearly enough, food is secondary....


....but it's still nice to get compliments. I bought Kossar's bagels as a back up, but my bagels came out pretty well indeed. I stuck to this recipe, and I was worried because the dough was SO stiff, it was near impossible to knead....but I left it to rise for an extra 30 minutes on the first go, and an extra 15 after it was shaped. They browned up perfectly, nice and chewy and still a good crispness to the outer shell.

I was lazy and didn't scale out the dough, so the bagels were different sizes, but all were maybe 1/2 the size of the current American bagel, more like what our parents would expected a bagel to be. Eating two of these bagels is a perfectly reasonable portion, and twice the opportunity for different toppings!

While the bagel dough was proofing, I whipped out 4 different muffin batters, baked off two at a time: lemon muffins which came out like biscuits, apple cinnamon muffins, corn muffins with whole sweet corn kernels, and a non-reciped oatbran-apple sauce-banana thing which tasted really healthy, but I didn't quite like. They looked faaabulous though:


The size worked to their advantage -- no way peeps would've eaten four muffins if they were full-sized. I had some good fish on hand for the bagels, but the homemade toppings got a lot of love, like the Israeli salad...


...and the hummus, to which B threw in some pine nuts to class up the joint....


....and the home-made butter, which to my palate was nothing special but was a show-offy kind of thing....

There was so much food, I forgot to make the bacon, oh well. To think I started 2009 by forgetting to make the bacon. Tomorrow, I'm going to do a run down about plans-hopes-goals for the year. This blog may be taking some interesting zigs and zags in the near future...

BREAKFAST: 9:30am, organic cheerios with good milk

AM TASTING: 11am-2pm, mini corn muffin, mini apple cinnamon muffin, mini lemon biscuit, mini banana oat bran muffin, half a homemade bagel, a spoonful of caramel ice cream, a slug of apple cider, .5 bowl, hunger 4/5

BRUNCH: 2pm-5:30pm, bagel with smoked sable, a few muffins, a small ramekin of caramel ice cream with a cube of brownie in it, glass of cider, 1 bowl, hunger 4/5

PM SNACK: 6:30pm, Boylan's Grape Soda, .5 bowl, hunger 3/5
I actually ordered a 12-pack of this stuff on-line because it's gotten so hard to find in shops. Easily the best grape soda out there, a real treat.

DINNER: 8pm, curry-flavor shrimp over a bed of Israeli Salad, .75 bowl, hunger 4/5
Needed something unsweet, defrosted some raw shrimp, salted and through in some curry powder, nice compliment to the lemonness of the salad.