Pretzels: Get it Twisted

04/12/22 • 65 min

2 Listeners

Anna and Lia are tied up in knots — delicious, doughy knots — because this episode is all about pretzels! Lia Ballentine, our Chef-Creator, starts us off with the pretzel baking basics and tells us how changing the dough’s pH by boiling it in baking soda or dropping it in a lye bath (that’s right, a lye bath) is essential to achieving the perfect pretzel taste and texture. She takes us through the multiple pretzel-related food holidays on the calendar, including National Pretzel Day, which is day loved by all - especially our hero Stanley from The Office. Plus, she tells us why a region in Pennsylvania is known as the “Snack Belt,” how German immigrants started the pretzel boom in America, and highlights two important women in pretzel history: Helen Hoff and “Auntie Anne” Beiler. Yes, Auntie Anne is a real person! Then get ready for one of the wildest Deep Dish segments ever as Anna Van Valin, our Foodlosopher, tells us the fascinating story behind the bizarre religious history of the pretzel — starting from Middle Ages when monks baked pretzels as a holy treat for students, all the way to the 1970s when an ex-clown founded a movement to bring people back to the Catholic Church during a time when secularism was on the rise and made pretzels the center of it. Anna shares the fascinating story of Marlene McCauley, the founder of “Pretzels for God,” and how she believed the pretzel, with the spiritual guidance of a Native American saint Kateri Tekakwitha, could save our souls. Get ready to enjoy some crazy twists in this episode because these pretzel stories are ones you knead to hear!

More info from the show:

Take a tour of the Julius Sturgis Bakery in Lititz, PA.
Watch this interview with Anne Beiler, the real Auntie Anne.
Relive the excitement of National Pretzel Day with Stanley and the Dunder Mifflin gang.
Learn all about the "Pretzels for God" movement.

Connect with us!

Want to support our women and BIPOC-created independent podcast? Buy us a coffee!
For more great content about the stories & foods we talk about on the show (plus a peek BTS) follow us at @FoodDayPod on Instagram, Twitter & Facebook or check out our webpage.
Join our mailing list for extra content and to keep up with all the exciting things we have planned for this season.

More info from the show:

Take a tour of the Julius Sturgis Bakery in Lititz, PA.
Watch this interview with Anne Beiler, the real Auntie Anne.
Relive the excitement of National Pretzel Day with Stanley and the Dunder Mifflin gang.
Learn all about the "Pretzels for God" movement.

Connect with us!

Want to support our women and BIPOC-created independent podcast? Buy us a coffee!
For more great content about the stories & foods we talk about on the show (plus a peek BTS) follow us at @FoodDayPod on Instagram, Twitter & Facebook or check out our webpage.
Join our mailing list for extra content and to keep up with all the exciting things we have planned for this season.

Previous Episode

Oysters: a Mysterious and Tragic Dramatic Reading

Overture, curtains, lights! Prepare to be mesmerized by Anna Van Valin’s and Lia Ballentine’s portrayals of the moving characters in this highly-lauded short play written by the world’s most creative storytellers — at the FDA. That’s right, in this bonus episode, we’re performing our much anticipated (and requested) dramatic reading of “Carlos’ Tragic and Mysterious Illness: How Carlos Almost Died from Eating Contaminated Raw Oysters.” In our episode, “Aphrodisiacs: Foods That Put us in The Mood,” our Foodlosopher Anna told us all about the FDA’s campaign to warn people about the dangers of eating raw oysters , which included this incredible one-act play/brochure/short story. And if you recall from our episode, “Arsenic & Eggnog: Poisonous Foods with Danny Murphy,” our Chef-Creator Lia filled us in on an annual celebration that happens every third full week of March: National Poison Prevention Week. So, in honor of National Poison Prevention Week and as a final attempt to warn you about/ruin raw oysters, we’re thrilled to bring you our dramatic reading of this remarkable play. Take your seats, everyone. And enjoy the show!
Join us on Instagram the last Wednesday of each month for an IG Live! Tune in to ask us all your burning questions, hear about deleted content, how we come up with the episodes, and behind the scenes tea ☕️ .
Explore more info from the show:

Check out the actual short story/brochure/one-act-play from the FDA here!
Learn more about National Poison Prevention Week here.

Connect with us!

Want to support our women and BIPOC-created independent podcast? Buy us a coffee!
For more great content about the stories & foods we talk about on the show (plus a peek BTS) follow us at @FoodDayPod on Instagram, Twitter & Facebook or check out our webpage.
Join our mailing list for extra content and to keep up with all the exciting things we have planned for this season.

Next Episode

"A MEAD-ing of the Minds" with Drinking Horn Meadcast

1 Recommendations

This is a crossover episode you MEAD to hear! Our Foodlosopher Anna Van Valin and Chef-Creator Lia Ballentine have joined forces with Evan Anderson and Nick Irvine of the Drinking Horn Meadcast to discuss (and DRINK) mead! Evan and Nick tell us all about the world of making and drinking this ancient fermented honey drink at their Meadery in Flagstaff, AZ, the care and feeding of bees, mead’s better-for-you buzz and why it’s good for the planet. Then Anna tells us how every culture has a version of “honey wine” - from the Celts, to Ethiopia to the Ancient Mayan empire! - which meant that bees, honey and mead made some exceptional cameos in their myths. Then Lia tells us about festivals and holidays, like National Mead Day. Listen to find out why we're all abuzz about mead in this special crossover episode! Be sure to subscribe to Every Day is a Food Day and the Drinking Horn Meadcast, and don't forget to follow us on social media @fooddaypod and @drinkinghornmeadery.
Explore from the show:
- Listen to Every Day is a Food Day's episode "Honey: 2 Queens, 1 Hive" to hear how it all began - plus bee and honey crimes, surprising celebrity beekeepers, and why you should never wear Ugg boots to check on your hives.
- Check out Guy Fieri's visit to the Drinking Horn Meadery on Guy's Family Road Trip.
- Want to try the 3 meads we drink in this episode? Order your mead from the Drinking Horn Meadery website.
Connect with us!
- Want to support our women and BIPOC-created independent podcast? Buy us a coffee!
- For more great content about the stories & foods we talk about on the show (plus a peek BTS) follow us at @FoodDayPod on Instagram, Twitter & Facebook or check out our webpage.
- Join our mailing list for extra content and to keep up with all the exciting things we have planned for this season.

Every Day is a Food Day - Pretzels: Get it Twisted

Transcript

Pretzels: Get it Twisted

0:00:00.1 Lia Ballentine: And there's even another love tradition for pretzels that goes back to a kind of a holiday that they would celebrate in Luxembourg, where guys would give pretzels to the girls that they had crushes on as gifts, and they would do this during Easter.

0:00:14.2 Anna Van Valin: Did the boys give all the girls like the same pretzel?

0:00:17.4 LB: I mean, I think if you really w