…of writing kids’ activity books is that those activities need to be tested, and I have a built in pair of guinea pigs in my boys. On Tuesdays, when B is at the library, E and I have been doing some testing. The latest project? Pretzels.

While the exact origin of the pretzel is unknown, legend has it that in the year 610 at a monastery in Southern France or Northern Italy, monks formed scraps of dough into strips and shaped them to represent a child’s arms, folded in prayer. The monks called this bread a pretiola, Latin for “little reward” and gave them to children as a reward for learning their prayers.

Of course, along with this medieval factoid, I’ll be including a pretzel recipe in “Great Medieval Projects You Can Build Yourself”. And of course, we had to test it! We made a cinnamon sugar version and a salted version. B came home and raved about how good they were, which made E (and me!) pretty happy.