Tea ring: The best Christmas breakfast pastry you’ll ever eat

Tea ring: The best Christmas breakfast pastry you’ll ever eat

When my brother and sisters and I were growing up, we eagerly watched the front porch at Christmas. We got excited about every delivery, but we waited for one package in particular: One from my grandma containing tea ring, the best Christmas breakfast pastry I have ever had the good luck to eat.

She made two tea rings for us every year, without fail, my entire childhood and mailed them to us in Oregon all the way from Illinois. They arrived slightly squished, but that just made the deliciousness more dense. We never complained.

Tea ring is a Christmas breakfast pastry that combines a fluffy dough, cinnamon, brown sugar and butter—lots of butter, of course. It’s a little like a cinnamon roll but won’t give you a sugar headache afterward. Even better, the recipe makes two, so you don’t feel bad going back for seconds—or fourths.

This Christmas breakfast pastry is like a cinnamon roll—but better. This tea ring recipe is a holiday family tradition! Ten Thousand Hour MamaThis Christmas breakfast pastry is like a cinnamon roll—but better. This tea ring recipe is a holiday family tradition! Ten Thousand Hour Mama

In the Christmas spirit of giving, I’m sharing my family’s most-treasured recipe for tea ring here. It’s legendary around these parts: Family friends continue to talk about tea ring, and friends of mine have dropped by Christmas day to “say hi”—aka angle for a slice of tea ring.

I’m always willing to share. If you have Christmas breakfast pastry this good, it’d be cruel not to.

The best Christmas breakfast pastry you'll ever make: A tea ring recipe handed down 4 generations, perfect for a new holiday family tradition! Ten Thousand Hour Mama Read more

Lemony grain salad: An easy, healthy BBQ side dish

One of the many reasons I love summer: the laid-back, no-frills approach to summer entertaining. BBQs are the quintessential summer party, and for good reason: Guests bring whatever side or dessert they can throw together (or pick up from the store on the way over). You can grill just about anything. And summer BBQs give ample opportunities for a gal like me to practice making a signature healthy side dish like this lemony grain salad.

This lemony grain salad is an easy, healthy side dish to bring to a BBQ this summer! can also be made gluten-free. Ten Thousand Hour Mama

First off, I bring some version of this lemony grain salad to just about every BBQ and potluck we go to in the summer. (Sorry, guys, I hope you haven’t gotten tired of it yet!) I do it because it’s delicious and friends usually end up asking me how to make it—and because this easy, healthy, vegetarian BBQ side dish is so forgiving. 

You don’t have cucumbers? No worries, throw in some radishes—or whatever you have in the vegetable drawer! You like your dressing on the sweeter side? Go you! Add some honey. You’re gluten-free? No prob, use quinoa for the grain base!

Because this recipe is so flexible, I don’t usually follow a recipe—but the last time I made it, I actually measured ingredients instead of eyeballing it. So I am super excited to share my bona fide recipe for lemony grain salad.

This lemony grain salad is an easy, healthy side dish to bring to a BBQ this summer! can also be made gluten-free. Ten Thousand Hour Mama Read more

Sushi with kids: How to get picky eaters to try sushi

You CAN go to sushi with kids, even picky eaters. Here's how! Ten Thousand Hour Mama

When my mother-in-law was visiting recently, I wanted to take her out to dinner as a thank you for watching Kiwi and Peeper while I worked. She loves sushi but lives in semi-rural Michigan—not exactly a mecca for delicious combos of rice, nori and raw fish. So I suggested we go out to a local sushi restaurant with kids—something I was semi-terrified to do, considering they are picky eaters.

I am actually shocked at how well sushi with kids went! The girls ate (a bit), and my mother-in-law ate a lot, and I ate the most. (“You don’t like roe? More for me!”)

If you’re feeling brave, I have some advice, dear parent of fussy eaters. Here are my suggestions on how to get picky eaters to try sushi!

Even picky eaters can eat sushi! How to get fussy eaters to try anything. Ten Thousand Hour Mama
Read more

Pretty Christmas cookies: Chocolate Candy Cane Pinwheels

Roughly 95% of the time I make cookies, I go for chocolate chip. They’re sure to please, I pretty much have the recipe memorized and I just drop scoops of dough onto a cookie sheet before—ta-da!—gooey chocolatey deliciousness. But for a Christmas cookie exchange party, I wanted to up my cookie game a bit. So I got all inspired and created these tasty, festive and pretty Christmas cookies: chocolate candy cane pinwheels!

Chocolate candy cane pinwheels are PRETTY Christmas cookies—and so festive! Ten Thousand Hour MamaVersion 2These chocolate candy cane pinwheels are festive, pretty Christmas cookies—perfect for a cookie exchange party! Ten Thousand Hour Mama

Dark chocolate, sugar cookie dough and candy cane chunks come together in something that tastes just right at the holidays.  Read more

How to bake with kids

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Warm muffins, melt-in-your-mouth rolls and all the pumpkin spice you could wish for: hello fall! Now that autumn days are cooler and crisper, I’m ready to take my oven out of its summer retirement. It’s no wonder that Peeper has been wanting to help me in the kitchen, too: She asks to help me make muffins at least once a week.

Of course a preschooler’s “help” in anything, especially an activity that involves dumping large quantities of messy flour, requires a certain amount of air quotes. But she loves it—and inviting a child to participate in choosing, preparing and serving food can encourage her to make healthier food choices in the future, according to research. (Um, do chocolate chip cookies count as a healthy food choice?)

Through plenty of experience, I have come across tips on how to bake with kids—without them losing a finger on a hot oven (or you losing your mind).

How to bake with your kids - fall cookies & pumpkin spice muffins, here we come! Ten Thousand Hour Mama Read more

Chocolate strawberry pops {Kid friendly recipe}

Welcome back, strawberry season. And hellooooooooo chocolate strawberry pops!

If you haven’t been stuffing your face with fresh, just-picked, locally grown strawberries, what the heck have you been doing? Just walk by the farmers market and you’ll smell strawberries warming in the sun.

And it’s u-pick season! If you’re in the Portland area, check out this article about the best u-pick berry farms from PDX Parent.

Now, the girls and I aren’t opposed to simply eating strawberries plain by the pint. But if you’re looking for a healthy dessert your kids can help make, you’ve found it. Recipe below!

Chocolate Strawberry Pops Healthy Dessert Recipe Read more

Apple-Carrot Muffins [recipe!]

Healthy apple-carrot muffins recipe

One morning on Memorial Day weekend, we had grand plans to go disc golfing at Milo McIver State Park near Estacada, a fabulous hiking/disc golfing/throwing sand into the river spot we go to again and again. The weather was less than cooperative, though, so rather than head out in the rain and muck, we stayed in. And instead of bemoaning the absence of park-going weather, Peeper and I stayed cozy with a baking project: making healthy apple-carrot muffins!

I pulled a chair up to the counter so my toddler sous chef could help (i.e. dump grated carrot on the floor and dunk every single measuring cup we own into the batter). She loved pouring ingredients into the bowl and stirring everything together. Remarkably, she lasted the entire apple-carrot muffins recipe!

Toddler healthy apple carrot muffins recipe Read more

5 tips to make bomb twice-baked sweet potatoes

Tips for Twice Baked Sweet Potatoes with Eggs

Twice-baked potatoes were one of my favorite dinners when I was growing up. I’d wait impatiently for them to bake and snag a top—a little piece of potato skin with melted cheese—as soon as they were out of the oven, inevitably burning my mouth. But it was so worth it! Now that I’m a little older (and more into easy, healthy dinners), twice-baked sweet potatoes are my go-to.

If you haven’t worked twice-baked sweet potatoes into your weeknight menu, here are 5 tips to make them delicious, every time. Twice-baked sweet potatoes are a phenomenal vegetarian dinner any day of the week!

5 tips to make the best twice-baked sweet potatoes, an easy weeknight vegetarian dinner! Ten Thousand Hour Mama Read more

Cookie Painting: No-frosting sugar cookies

Sugar cookies no frosting decorations

A few times a year when I was growing up, my mom would break out the cookie cutters and we’d decorate sugar cookies. But we never had icing bags or tubs of frosting—no, no, no. Instead, we were the only family I knew that specialized in no-frosting sugar cookies. How did we do it? (And how did the kids not complain about the lack of the crazy-sugary icing?) Two words: Painting cookies.

Yessssss.

Painting cookies always seemed like a big event. We’d sort through the mountain of semi-misshapen airplanes, giraffes, gingerbread men and stars, picking out the ones for my mom to use. (There was never any question whether we’d select the Mystery Cookie Cutter, which looked kind of like California and kind of like a stretched-out stocking, of course.) She would lay out the raw dough on cookie sheets, and we kids would go at ’em.

Fluorescent sprinkles, those silver balls that I’m pretty sure were supposed to be inedible, and red hots—which everyone liked to use but no one except my older sister liked to actually eat—were all fair game. And under it all was painting cookies, a Ryan family technique that involves just egg wash and food coloring for no-frosting sugar cookies. They were delicious and fun to make.

We’d sweep up silver balls and wipe up sprinkles for weeks to come, but the mess was always worth the fun. (Isn’t it always?) Read more

When you’re terrible at meal planning: Learning to feed myself—again

I may be terrible at meal planning, but Mama’s gotta eat. So I have to learn to feed myself (and my family!) so no one, especially me, gets hangry.

How to not suck at feeding yourself when you're terrible at meal planning. Ten Thousand Hour Mama

I’ve always been terrible at meal planning.

Case in point: One late night when I was in college, my roommate Cedar walked into the kitchen and found me eating cold refried beans out of the can.

He was mortified. I was mortified.

“At least heat them up,” he said. Oh, the shame.

I had a few semi-legit explanations for my sorry excuse for a meal. I was operating on an average of five hours of sleep a night, was the editor-in-chief of the journalism school’s magazine, tutored other college students 20 hours a week and maintained a 4.0 GPA. Cooking was not exactly at the top of my priorities.

The truth is, though, when things get tough on the home front, I’m terrible at meal planning in particular and, more generally, the basic skill of feeding myself. Worse, I have a very fast metabolism and burn through food like a hummingbird. I’m also the world’s most indecisive person if I haven’t eaten in a while.

But even though I’m terrible at meal planning doesn’t mean I can’t learn.

How to not suck at meal planning

Being terrible at meal planning has its consequences. Take, for example, one time (or, ah, multiple times) when I was pregnant with Peeper. I came home from work, sat down in the middle of the kitchen and bawled because I was so hungry but didn’t know what to eat.

Thank goodness for cereal, amirite?

Anyway, the notorious night of the refried beans popped into my head this week when I was ravenous and had stuck my head in the fridge for the fourth time only to see that, disappointingly, no fully prepared meals had mysteriously appeared. I ended up microwaving some refrieds and eating them with cheese on a tortilla. Not quite as pitiful as that college snack, but still.

Anyhow. This is all to say that especially because I’m growing another tiny life inside me, I need to be a little more conscientious about feeding myself (and the rest of my family).

Why meal planning is the answer

You and I already know the reasons to meal plan. It reduces food waste—a huge problem in the US, where we throw out 133 billion pounds of food every year. It saves money. And it saves the stress of having zero clues or inspiration on what to put on your plate each night.

I’ve been utterly crap at my previous attempts to plan our meals ahead of time. But we should never let the past define our futures! (Ok, I’m getting a little ridiculous, but you know what I mean!)

 

So help me, Internet world: What is your best advice for planning meals? Or are you like me and find yourself settling for canned refrieds for lunch?