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Sugar buns are a stunning morning treat, with layers of rich, flaky puff pastry dough swirled with a fragrant sugar mixture and coated in warm butter and sparkling sugar. Consider them the ideal pastry for a fast-and-fancy breakfast treat. They are the easiest way to bring a warm, sugary confection to your mornings (besides picking some up from your favorite bakery).

Unlike their cousins — morning buns, sticky buns, and cinnamon buns — sugar buns can be made with hardly any planning. In less than one hour and with about six ingredients or fewer, you can have these beauties for breakfast.

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As an interior designer and stylist, I firmly believe in the power of a well-designed table. It can make or break a party! Not to mention, your excellently crafted recipes deserve a setting worthy of showcasing and complementing all you’ve cooked up.

But a beautiful table doesn’t have to be complicated or exhausting — don’t let the thought put you on pause! These three simple tricks will wow your guests with minimal effort.

<p><a href=’http://www.thekitchn.com/3-smart-tips-for-setting-a-more-beautiful-holiday-table-238096′><strong>READ MORE »</strong></a></p>

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Inline_Gifts_to_Make_You_MoveToday’s guest post is by Katy Bowman, biomechanist and author of the bestselling Move Your DNA and a new release, Movement Matters, which examines our sedentary culture, our personal relationship to movement, and some of the global effects of outsourcing movement. I’m happy to welcome her back to Mark’s Daily Apple.

Ancestral health models have begun reaching beyond diet and have expanded to include sleep, stress, parenting practices, and movement. This leads to the question, “Can we better incorporate the ideas of ‘natural health’ into our holidays?”

Of course we can! We can prepare our holiday meals with better-sourced ingredients and eliminate the things we know aren’t doing our bodies good. But beyond the primary meal, are there other aspects of a holiday we can consider? Spoiler alert: there are.

I’ve always loved giving gifts. Choosing the right book, the perfect necklace, the coziest sweater for someone I love has always been an essential part of the holidays for me. But in recent years, I’ve run into a gift-giving dilemma. Most people I know complain about having too much stuff, and many are striving for a more minimal approach to life, from footwear to furniture.

Many are trying to find ways to add more movement to their lives beyond exercise—and to stop outsourcing so much of their movement to items of convenience produced with the expense of fossil fuel production, in some other area of the globe, in conditions we wouldn’t find acceptable were we the ones having to labor.

The more I’ve come to understand the ecology of human movement—how directly exchanging our own personal movement for the things we require in our daily life not only improves our personal physiology, but can decrease the strain we place on other humans and the planet—the fewer irresponsibly manufactured items I feel comfortable gifting.

BUT I LIKE TO GIVE PRESENTS! So, how can we be generous and festive, revel in the joy of giving, while reclaiming our outsourced movement and addressing our essential human need to MOVE? How can we be generous with our family and friends and our communities and our own bodies and the rest of the world all at the same time? Is it even possible?

It is. Behold, for I bring you great tidings of joy: a list of holiday gifts that not only get you and your giftee moving more, but also increase what I call “vitamin Nature” and “vitamin Community”—other important aspects of ancestral health.

If you’re feeling pressed for time, don’t fret (fretting doesn’t need to be part of a celebration); there is all sorts of gear you can quickly source that encourages more movement, more natural movement, and more nature—i.e., it will get someone moving after the gift has been given.

GIFTS TO BUY…

These are a step up from the conventional store-bought gift in terms of their impact on your giftee’s body and life.

Squat Platforms

Here, I’ll just say it: Everybody poops. If you want more movement in your life (and in your bathroom), use a squat platform to toilet. More squats and less bearing down. If you want to get moving more, too, download DIY instructions and build one to gift, or gift a Squatty Potty (I’m going out on a limb and suggesting this gift is best given to someone you know pretty well). They’re made in the USA, i.e., with labor practices you can stand (or squat) by.

POTTY STOOLS

Hiking Guidebooks

A hiking guidebook is like an invitation to move through nature, not only for exercise but to de-stress and connect with the bigger picture. There are all sorts of hiking books—some for families, and some for those with creaky knees. Bonus points if you take a walk down to your local bookstore to find guides local to your area, by local experts. Even regular exercisers on your list can be unaware of all the beautiful trails within their reach.

Foraging Guidebooks or Wild Food Cookbooks

An excellent companion to #2, a good foraging guidebook can introduce your loved ones to the landscape around them. Moving directly for our food allows for a far wider range of movements than we usually get—squatting to collect berries, reaching for fruits, digging for tubers—and it results in nutrient-dense food!

Wild food is completely unprocessed, meaning some part of you—teeth, hands, arms—needs to work to get it ready to digest. Foraging and wild-food cookbooks are typically applicable to certain geographical areas. Research carefully as the region covered by the book should be noted. Again, search out local foragers, and connect with them online or in person (vitamin Community!) as they’re likely well-versed on the best books for their areas.

BOOKS STANDING ON STUMP

Hiking and Foraging Accouterments

Moving through nature is our family pastime, so often the gifts we give are things that allow us to stay outside longer. A thermos full of a hot drink makes a winter hike much more appealing. Fill one with hot ginger tea or bone broth, and you’re ready to keep warm on winter hikes. And a foraging bag or basket for foragers big and small makes it easy to keep moving as you collect.

HIKING ACCOUTREMENTS

Human-Powered Kitchen Tools

There used to be, and can still be, a ton of movement going into your meals. A hand coffee grinder, mortar and pestle, potato masher, and traditional food mill that you can use instead of a stick blender to purée soups all offer your giftee the opportunity to move more in the kitchen and save electricity in the process (and speaking of electricity, if you’ve got a giftee looking to understand more about how electricity makes it into one’s home, check out The Grid: The Fraying Wires Between Americans and Our Energy Future).

Bonus: doing things by hand also means fresher ingredients—there’s nothing like the scent of fresh herbs and spices being pulverized by the mortar and pestle.

KITCHEN MOVES

A Living Tree

For those whose holidays include a Christmas tree, give the gift of a living tree in pot. You can buy traditional potted Christmas trees and then plant them after the holidays are over (an amazingly movement-filled activity), or you can go for an unconventional tree—like a fruit tree—which will continue to offer gifts far into the future.

Bushcraft Experience

There are experts in many communities willing and excited to pass on their knowledge of wilderness survival. Buy a gift certificate for a traditional firebuilding class, a class on how to build a shelter, or how to track animals. These skills aren’t quaint throwbacks—having them not only affords us a huge range of movements never called on in the modern Western world, but also makes nature and wilderness a more appealing place for us, so we’ll spend more time moving in nature, which will make us even better at those skills, which will make nature an even more appealing place for us to be, so we’ll spend more time in it… You get it, right?

BUSHCRAFT CLASS

A Plot in a Community Garden

Do you know someone who’s been dying to start growing more of their own food but doesn’t have the space? Many cities have community gardens established where plots can be purchased or rented.

garden tower in victoria

GIFTS TO CREATE…

Handmade gifts typically require greater exchange of your personal time and movement—something that can make them even more treasured.

Functional “Crafts”

Perhaps thanks to Pinterest, it seems we’re going through a second Arts & Crafts period. Before you start groaning here, let me say I am HORRIBLE at arts and crafts. However, a few years ago my family decided to gift only handmade items, and it turned out homemade doesn’t equal crafting at all. It just equals labor (read: movement). Movement, I am good at, especially when it comes to turning wild food (like elderberries) into something functional (like medicinal elderberry syrup).

ELDERBERRY syrup

You’re probably already good at something, like knitting or sewing, or woodworking, or painting, or people walking (seriously). Put your skills to work to make your gifts this year (how about sewing reusable grocery bags or building small raised beds that support future movement?). You can also consider learning a new skill before the holidays—learn to crochet a simple scarf or hand-build a mug. Each skill you learn brings you more opportunity for movement, making every gift something you’re also gifting yourself!

Wild-Harvested Food Gifts

If you have any foraging or hunting knowledge, use it (and thus your movement) to create a delicious food gift. Some of my most favorite gifts include a bag of wild rice, a jar of dehydrated rosehips, and a bag of venison steaks. Another way of moving comes after the wild ingredients are sourced: make acorn-flour cookies, roast fresh chestnuts, make cranberry sauce from foraged berries, turn porcini mushrooms into a savory shortbread, or fill your giftee’s freezer with a moose lasagna. P.S. I’ve had moose lasagna, and it’s delicious.

Mushroom shortbread

Local/Sustainable Food, Prepared by You

If you’re a homesteader, you’ve probably done this for years. For those of us just catching up, walk to (or through) the farmer’s market or head to a U-pick farm and gather ingredients to make jams, jerky, pies, pemmican, and more.

FOOD GIFTS

A Handmade Wreath or Winter Flower Bouquet

Harvest boughs from living trees yourself, collect acorns and pinecones and holly berries, and give someone a beautiful, fresh, movement-made wreath. Or take a walk to harvest branches, grasses, and winter blooms and make your giftee a beautiful nature arrangement that will last the entire winter.

Potted Herbs

If you have a green thumb, toss the rest of us a bone. Transplanting a little pot of basil or creating a more complex indoor gardening system (a living wall, yay!) is not only a gift of fresh future food, it’s also a gift of movement: to tend to the plants, to harvest their leaves, and to process the herbs into something they might just invite you over to eat (win-win!).

standing succulent garden

As I’ve already said, many in our culture have so much and know it. This year, like no other before, I’ve been hearing more and more loudly from friends and family, variations of “I really don’t want any more stuff.” Thus, I’ve started thinking about how to apply the “move more” mentality to gifting experiences that benefit those beyond my normal gift-giving circles.

Serve Others Directly

While this idea isn’t new, it is sadly underutilized. So consider this a reminder: You can check in with your local soup kitchen to see what’s needed this season (and beyond). You can start working with others to gather unused foods from local trees and farms and delivering them to food banks. You can also work directly in the kitchen—use your body to chop, stir, ladle, and carve to feed those far less fortunate and privileged. If you celebrate Christmas, this can be an incredibly rewarding, invigorating way to spend time during the holidays. (And again, beyond—your volunteering journey can begin during the holidays, but continue during the rest of the year.)

Build a “Little Free Library”

Organize a group of people you normally exchange gifts with to make a Little Free Library together for your community. Walk to a secondhand bookstore to fill the shelves, or request each gift-giver donate books from their own shelves. Little Free Libraries aren’t only about the books; they make your neighborhood more inviting to walkers. Not only will you be moving together to build and stock it, you’ll be encouraging your community to move (and learn) more too.

LENDING LIBRARY

Volunteer at or Create a Community Garden

If there is a community garden already in operation in your neighborhood, ask your friends to donate their time and movement with yours and assist in putting gardens to bed for the winter (or, if you’re down under, to tend and grow!).

And guess what: If there isn’t a community garden in your neighborhood, you can make one. Do the work of talking to your local government about permission, secure some land (many churches and schools are happy to donate space to this endeavor), and get some materials donated from a hardware store. Then you and your fellow gift-givers can set up a community garden to be planted in the spring. The movement involved in tending to food is another gift that keeps on giving.

Go Caroling on Behalf of Your Local Food Bank

Choose traditional songs or pop tunes, promise your family a cup of warm broth or spiced cider, print out some lyrics, and sing your way around the neighborhood. Collect and then carry donations for the local food bank as you go (They’ll get heavy, but so what? Haven’t you been wanting more exercise?) alongside the gift of beautiful (or at least enthusiastic) music for your neighbors.

Hopefully, this list not only inspires you to move more, but also inspires more of your own ideas. Use the hashtag #mymovementmatters on social media to share your attempts at or ideas for “gifts that move you”!

Thanks for reading, everyone. Which of these ideas has inspired you the most today? Other ideas to add? To learn more about Katy Bowman’s work, she suggests walking to your local library or bookshop. And for more ideas of how to create a movement-rich life, follow her on Instagram. Have a great end to the week.

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A big casserole dish filled with baked pasta is not only the easiest and most affordable way to feed a crowd, but it’s also the most well-received. Everyone can get behind a dinner of extra-cheesy, decadent pasta on their plate — especially if they’re luckily enough to snag a scoop with some of those crispy edges.

Pasta bakes are quick to assemble and can usually be prepared or frozen ahead of time, so it’s just a matter sticking one in the oven when you’re expecting a crowd at your door, which happens a lot this time of year. Whether you love a classic baked ziti or are looking to take your lasagna to the next level with the help of butternut squash and sausage, here are 15 pasta bakes to win over your group of hungry friends and family.

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There are many great wine gifts for the wine-lover on your holiday shopping list — and there are a few that you should never give. While handmade glass charms and other wine paraphernalia might seem like a good idea, most simply add clutter to countertops, and don’t enhance the wine-drinking experience.

To make sure your gift is used and cherished, instead of relegated to junk drawers or re-gifted on Etsy and eBay, here are five wine-related gifts to avoid — and some suggested alternatives.

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After total knee replacement (TKR), the risk for hip fracture increased by 4% and the risk for vertebral fracture increased by 19% percent compared to the population without TKR

By 2030, total knee replacement surgeries are projected to grow 673% to 3.5 million procedures per year.Half the patients now receiving knee replacements are younger than 65 years of age, and most of them are in the workforce.
 
Researchers from the Sahlgrenska Academy in Molndal, Sweden have published2 preliminary results of a fracture risk study, which was based on analysis of medical records from 1987 to 2002 covering the entire Swedish population born between 1902 and 1952.
 

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Cheese boards tend to have some rules, or perhaps they’re more like guidelines, to make them successful: Choose one aged cheese, one soft cheese, something runny. Even with the best suggestions (here are ours) they can feel overwhelming — and expensive. And they’re not really a complete meal. To address all the things a cheese board isn’t, you should consider the snack board — the smart solution for times when you don’t need a full meal or aren’t satisfied with just a snack.

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From Apartment Therapy → Get a Green Clean: How to Disinfect Your Whole Home With Tea Tree Oil

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Welcome to our new Bite-Sized Guides, your guide to destinations near and far for cooks who love food and love to explore the world. Your companion for our first guide, to the Catskills in upstate New York, is Sarah Copeland, cookbook author and mama to two little ones. Here’s why she and her family love their life in the Catskills, and why we think you may enjoy a visit too.

I first came to the Catskills in 2001. I’ll never forget the effect of the landscape as we sped up the Hudson on the Metro North: Everyone seemed to shed their city agenda for a warmer, more relaxed stance.

I was a brand-new New Yorker and, as it was Thanksgiving and I was far from home, I had been invited to spend the holidays with a friend, near his family home in Rhinebeck. We stayed in a big open barn, in a bed laid thick with pillows and quilts. Where I come from, barns were for hay and animals; here, they housed art, treasures, holiday feasts — and me.

That weekend, we gathered and cleaned dozens of wild mushrooms, sweated them with butter and shallots, and tossed them with simmering stock and breadcrumbs (the kind that didn’t come from a bag). We sat by the fire. We played games. We told stories.

There were stories connected to most of the foods we ate, the bowls we ate out of, the land we hiked, the people we met. And there was space, the feeling of room above, beside, and beyond in all directions. Here, there was room to grow, the possibility of new.

For years after, I longed for this feeling, this simple, but magical life. And I wondered, Why weren’t more people living it?

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No matter which way you slice it, the key to a winning plate of French toast or a pan of bread pudding is the type of bread used to make these irresistible dishes. It’s the main ingredient, so here’s the inside scoop on what you need to know.

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