Tuesday: Hot Buttered Pretzels, the Perfect Protein Snack & Date-Night Soup

Got up this morning and kept breakfast simple: bacon and bagels.

Then we got right to work on school.

We’ve been hitting school pretty hard this week because with me out of town Thursday and Friday last week, we basically lost both days. So this week is very much about getting everybody back on track.

But for lunch, I decided we needed something fun.

The Return of Pretzel Monday…on a Tuesday

I don’t think I’ve told this story in a long time.

Back when COVID first started, a friend told me about the King Arthur Baking recipe for Hot Buttered Soft Pretzels.

And somehow that turned into Pretzel Monday.

Every Monday, we made pretzels.

At this point, I have easily made this recipe a hundred times, and I consider myself a professional.

The best part?

This recipe is almost impossible to mess up.

Which makes it absolutely fantastic for kids.

It’s Basically Edible Play-Doh

If your kids want something tactile—if they want to squish dough and roll it and twist it and basically treat it like Play-Doh—this is your recipe.

The dough itself comes together with just five basic ingredients, and it only needs to rise for about 30 minutes.

That’s it.

You can start making pretzels at 10 a.m. and easily be eating them by 11.

Which is good because my family is absolutely capable of eating lunch at 11.

After the dough rises, portion it out and let everybody start creating.

And here’s the magical part:

They can mess with this dough for what feels like forever.

Roll it.

Reroll it.

Make a pretzel.

Decide your pretzel is terrible.

Turn it into something else.

It’s incredibly forgiving.

I’ll link the original King Arthur recipe here, but I’ve made a few tweaks over the years that I want to write up for my website too.

And we’ve developed four versions that we can make from the same batch.

Four Pretzels, One Dough

We do:

Original salted pretzels

Cinnamon-sugar pretzels

Pizza pretzels

Hot dog pretzels

And you don’t need four different recipes.

Make one batch of dough and let everybody decide what they want their portion to become.

Today we made all four.

No Boiling Pot Required

This is the other reason I love this recipe.

A lot of homemade pretzel recipes have you actually boil the dough.

No.

I am not standing over a giant pot of boiling water while children fling pretzel dough around my kitchen.

This recipe uses a warm baking-soda bath instead.

I put the baking soda into a shallow dish, add the hot water and leave the whole thing right on the counter.

Once everybody is finished playing with—I mean, shaping—their dough, we dip each piece into the baking-soda bath and transfer it to a parchment-lined baking sheet.

Then they bake at 475°F for about 10 minutes.

When they come out?

Melted butter.

Lots of it.

Brush that warm butter all over the pretzels.

The cinnamon-sugar ones get their cinnamon sugar, and the pizza and hot dog versions get finished their own way.

Add some fruit and vegetables alongside, and lunch is done.

And the kids basically made it themselves.

This Is Why I Keep Cooked Protein Around

Later, we needed to run some errands, and I realized I was hungry before we left.

This is one of those moments when having cooked protein in the refrigerator makes such a difference.

I grabbed one of the burgers I grilled last night, added some leftover vegetables and ate that before we left.

Ten out of ten snack.

Could I have grabbed some chips?

Of course.

Nothing wrong with chips.

But I know that if I’m actually hungry, eating a burger and some vegetables is going to make me feel a whole lot better while we’re out running errands.

And it took basically no more effort because the burger was already cooked.

My Mom Invented the Food Heater

Tuesday is violin day for my girls, which means my mom takes them to violin.

There’s a Chick-fil-A right across the street, and she will often pick up dinner for the kids while she’s there.

And this is your periodic reminder that any time you think I have a clever food idea, there’s a decent chance I stole it from my mother.

My mom keeps a cooler in her car.

Need to keep groceries cold?

It’s a cooler.

Need to drive Chick-fil-A home and keep it warm?

It’s a heater.

She puts the warm food inside, closes it up and brings it home to the kids.

She’s been doing things like this since I was a kid.

The original Future-You food strategist.

And Then I Realized I Had Soup

Once the kids’ dinner was handled, I started thinking about what Chris and I could eat.

Then I looked in the refrigerator.

I had just enough leftover chicken from Sunday’s dinner for the two of us.

I had leftover rice.

And I still had the open carton of chicken broth from Friday’s stir-fry.

Well.

Obviously we’re making soup.

So I turned those leftovers into a quick chicken-and-rice soup and made nice salads to go alongside it.

The kids ate their Chick-fil-A.

Then Chris and I sat down afterward with our soup and salads and had a little Tuesday-night date dinner together.

Nothing complicated.

And really, that’s the theme of today.

Five basic ingredients become an entire pretzel-making activity and lunch.

One leftover burger becomes the perfect pre-errand snack.

A cooler becomes a heater.

And leftover chicken, rice and an open carton of broth become dinner for two.