Cheerfulness, confidence, laughter, happiness, love, courage and curiosity...

... that's what we sincerely wish you in the new year! Enjoy the beautiful moments and collect happy, unforgettable memories.

By the way, the best way to do this is to write a note every week with an experience that made you happy. It can also be small things, like finally sleeping in again, a good capucchino, a smile at the supermarket checkout, a warming ray of sunshine during your lunch break or a compliment from a colleague. Throw this note into a jar. And read through all the beautiful memories of New Year's Eve. You will realise: Your year was full of happiness!

My first nice memory in the New Year is usually the same every year: baking and eating our New Year's pretzel! A delicious tradition here in South Baden: The yeast dough pretzel decorated with symbols of luck tastes especially good to us right after the fireworks, spread with butter and Nutella - want a taste?

Here is the tried-and-tested family recipe, which is also used for yeast dough bunnies at Easter and "Grättimänner" at St. Nicholas:

1 kg flour

1 tablespoon salt

550 ml lukewarm milk

40 g fresh yeast

1 tbsp sugar

3 tbsp oil

1 egg yolk

• Put the flour in a bowl and mix in the salt. Make a well in the centre.Mix the yeast and sugar in the lukewarm milk. Stir in the oil. Pour everything into the flour well.
• Whisk the egg yolks and add.
• Mix everything well.
• Remove the dough from the bowl and knead and tap it until it is smooth. Ideally, you should knead the dough for around 15 minutes (this will also give your arms a workout!).
• Turn a ball of dough, put it back into the roughly cleaned bowl, cover with a cloth. Leave to rise in a warm place for 1 hour.
• Take out the dough, form a pretzel with about ¾ of the dough and use the rest for decoration: e.g. lucky clover, lucky pigs, chimney sweeps, year numbers, small braids, spirals, etc.
• Place on a baking tray lined with baking paper and brush with egg yolk.
• Bake in the middle of the oven at 220 degrees C for 15-20 minutes.

I and the entire H2O team wish you a happy new year!

Catherine Akintschin, Marketing Assistant