~ Ordinary Mary's Extraordinary Deed ~

This months theme for Families Create! is Heroes and Heroines and again we have found the perfect book. Ordinary Mary's Extraordinary Deed by Emily Pearson illustrations by Fumi Kosaka.

"You see, when Mrs. Bishop made muffins from Mary's blueberries, not only the paperboy, Billy Parker, but the other four people, too, made five people smile, and those five did, too, and after a while - in only fifteen days- love was sent to every person everywhere!"

If we were to do one nice thing for one person and that person did one nice thing for 5 people and those five people did one nice thing for five more people, in 15 days 6,103,515,625 people would have something nice or kindness shown to them. Pretty incredible!!

And, to go along with our story the kids and I made blueberry bread. They wanted to make muffins but the muffin papers were gone and all I have is aluminum muffin tins so blueberry bread was the next best thing.

Coconut Flour Blueberry Muffins/Bread

6 eggs

5 tbsp butter or coconut oil melted

6 tbsp coconut milk or whole milk

3 tbsp honey

3 tbsp rapadura

1/2 tsp sea salt

1 tsp bourbon vanilla

1/2 c sifted coconut flour

1/2 tsp aluminum free baking powder

1 c frozen blueberries

Whisk together liquids and the add the dry. Whisk really well until all the lumps are gone. Stir in blueberries. Pour into a glass loaf pan and bake at 400 for 30 minutes. Enjoy!!

Lesson Plan for Ordinary Mary's Extraordinary Deeds

Shared at:

Real Food Wednesdays

Simple Lives Thursday

Pennywise Platter Thursday

Fight Back Friday

February brought many heroic crafts to the Families, Create! Carnival. Check out some of the wonderful posts from last month's participants below, and be sure to visit Code Name: Mama and Living Peacefully with Children to find out how you can participate in the next Families, Create! Carnival.

• The Artsy Mama made a personalized birthday hat for her son's first birthday. Learn how to make a Hero's Birthday Hat for your hero or heroine with very few sewing skills.
• Mandy at Living Peacefully with Children found inspiration in books for some I-Spy items in her post, I Spy Items - The Last Olympians and The Lost Heroes.
• Megan at Purple Dancing Dahlias found out how one random act of kindness can shower the world in kindness in the book Ordinary Mary's Extraordinary Deed.
• It's a bird, it's a plane, it's Super Kieran! Dionna at Code Name: Mama shares the Superhero Capes she made to celebrate her son's heroic qualities.
• At Z Everyday Things, Mama G made easy and quick Super Zs!, personalized superhero appliques on shirts, for her children. Easy and quick!
• Lauren at Hobo Mama has a son who loves to dream up stories and one heroic imaginary friend. Read her post about Space-Alien Hot-Dog Monster & Silly Guy .
• Heroes are often everyday people. Mandy at Living Peacefully with Children was inspired by the gift of a sock in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, prompting her to make Dobby's Sock as part of her Harry Potter ornaments.
• Galit Breen at Three Little Waves used the book Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes as a springboard for a sensitive discussion and a fun origami project for her whole family in her post Families Create: Heroes and Heroines.
• Need a creative gift idea for a toddler or preschooler? Dionna at Code Name: Mama shares a simple Tutorial for a Two-Sided Felt Playmat (one side is outer space, one side is a jungle scene).
• Literature and adventure inspired Mandy @ Living Peacefully with Children to make these Treasure Bags for Imbolc.

Visit Code Name: Mama and Living Peacefully with Children to find out how you can participate in the next Families, Create! Carnival. Our March theme is "Animals" - what animals are your favorites and why? Get creative and share with us how animals are a part of your and your children's lives

~ The Good, The Bad, & the Ugly ~

The Good: I can salvage just about anything when it comes to cooking. Even with huge screw-ups, I always seem to be able to manage to turn it into something that tastes good.

The Bad: Common sense says that I have screwed up a lot and had lots of practice making something from nothing.

The Ugly: There is really only one thing I can remember throwing in the garbage, more out of fustration I think than anything else. I tried making sloppyjoes under-the-bun. It called for Bisquic which isn't allowed in my home, so I made corn bread and put that on top of my sloppyjoe meat. Big time fail! I used way to small of a pan and after 1 1/2 of cooking it still wasn't done. My husband was still going to eat it, his reasoning, "I'm hungry". Seriouly dude, you are not eating that half cooked pan of slop.

Well, I did it again this morning. I started making sourdough last night with the intent of having 5 french loaves ready for breakfast in the morning. It must have been cold in the house (imagine that with the average temp for the last few days in the -20) because it took forever to rise. So long, in fact that I completely forgot about it and went to bed. My nice round loaf of dough that I put in the oven to rise was no longer my nice ball of dough but a bowl of goo by morning.

I still managed so get 6 loaves of sourdough french bread and 2 loaves of raisin cinnamon bread. It took a lot of extra flour and patiences. On a sad note, my sourdough aquire some extra cultures somewhere in the past few days and started to grow some where orange stuff so I tossed it. I was thinking about going grain free for awhile anyway so maybe this is just the push I needed.

~ Breakfast on the Go ~

Long story short, I ran out of baking dishes so I had to get creative when it came to the baked oatmeal. Used my favorite unbleached paper liners (my pans are aluminum) and filled them to the top with oatmeal batter. They turned out prefect and would be a great quick grab and go breakfast. You could even bake a bunch at the beginning of the week so that you had them when you needed them.

~ Soaked Pumpkin Bread ~

photo credit

This is my all time favorite pumpkin bread recipe. I use it for cake and frost it with cream cheese frosting for dessert and no one is the wiser, yet we can eat it at breakfast and its still healthy. I stumbled upon it at GNOWFGLINS, Embracing "God's Natural, Organic, Whole Foods, Grown Locally, In Season" and I am so glad that I did.

I debated a good long while with myself on whether I should type out the recipe and give credit where credit is due, to Wardeh or give you a link so that you have to go and check out the recipe at her site and find all the other really good stuff she has there. Do to a small cling-on, its the latter, so buzz on over to GNOWFGLINS to get the recipe, you won't be sorry you did.

~ A French Breakfast Part 2 ~

Success! We had a lovely breakfast of pink pastries, crumpets, and sourdough french toast with chai tea. The kids declined the carob addition and I admit, why mess with the prefect cup of chai we have seemed to mastered.

I used the Cream Cheese Breakfast Pastry and Yogurt Dough recipes from Nourishing Traditions. Both recipes require you to soak your flour over night to get rid of the phytic acid in the flour. Instead of using plain cream cheese I mixed strawberries into mine.

I put my homemade yogurt in a cheese making bag and let the whey drain out of it. It was more like a greek yogurt after I added the strawberries (which I also drained the juice out of).

The Cream Cheese Breakfast Pastry dough was quite a bit stickier than it was suppose to be because of the extra moisture from the strawberries. It was more like a half soaked recipe by the time I added extra flour so I could roll it out but the pastries turned out perfect.

I rolled out my dough and brushed it with butter and then sprinkled it with just a touch of sugar, extra cinnamon and pecans. I rolled it up 1 1/2 turns and then cut my dough. Roll up another 1 1/2 turns and cut dough again. Roll up last third and cut into slices. Its hard to tell that they are pink, but they are, I promise. The Yogurt Dough is similar to pizza crust. I made little crumpet type buiscutts out of them and we split them and put butter and raw honey on them. It was all really good and rather fun to have pink food for breakfast, at least my daughter thought so!

I think this would be perfect for Valentine's Day. You could take and twist two pieces of dough together and make a heart shaped pretzel.

~ A French Breakfast Part 1 ~

My mom went to France when she was in high school and she always talks about the french breakfast, hard rolls and hot cocoa. I think I may have one up-ed that, Strawberry Yogurt Bread and Hot Carob/Chai Milk.
Isn't that just the prettiest pink dough? This is the first time I have tried this and I am really excited to see how it turns out, so stay tune tomorrow to see the finished product.

~ Almost Wordless Wednesday ~

The great sourdought blob! *insert scary laugh here*

~ Carob Cherry Sourdough Breakfast Bread ~

After making way to much sourdough starter this morning I needed something to do with it. I had already started a double batch of bread and sourdough pretzels. The blueberry coffee cake in the cookbook looked good, but wasn't a sourdough recipe and because I missed the order this month I didn't have enough blueberries. I did have lots of frozen cherries and remembered seeing a post awhile back about chocolate cherry sourdough bread, but didn't have the recipe for it and didn't have the time to look for it. What to do?... Thus the idea for Carob Cherry Sourdough Breakfast Bread was born and I am so glad it was. It tops the Carob Zucchini Cake by far, in my opinion anyway.

1 c sourdough starter
1/4 c soft butter
3/4 c rapadura
1 egg plus 2 egg yolks
1/2 c milk
1/2 c carob powder
1/2 c sifted whole wheat flour to remove the bran
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 celtic sea salt
2 c frozen cherries, halved

Cream butter and sugar together and then beat in the eggs and milk. Add your starter and sifted flour, carob, salt, and soda. Mix very well. Gently fold in the cherries. Place batter into a greased and floured 8 inch square pan and allow to stand in a warm place for at least 20 minutes.

While waiting, prepare the topping:

1/3 c rapadura
1/3 c sifted flour
1/3 c soaked and dehydrated oats
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 cup soft butter

Mix sugar, flour, cinnamon together and cut in butter. Gently mix in oats. Sprinkle on top of bread just before baking in a 375 degree oven for 45 to 50 minutes. Do not under bake, it is moist but I cooked it until it pulled away from the pan. Wait until it cools to eat otherwise it will be a sticky mess.

**This post is part of **

Monday Mania @ The Healthy Home Economist

Tuesday Twister @ GNOWFGLINS

Real Food Wednesdays @ Kelly the Kitchen Kop

Simple Lives Thursday @ A Little Bit of Spain in Iowa

Fight Back Friday @ Food Renegade

~ Sourdough Bread ~

I finally ordered some sourdough starter from Cultures for Health. I have made my own starter in the past but it seems like it is good for a few batches of bread and them something happens and it goes bad.

I used the recipe on the back of the instructions for the starter and it is sooo good. Crusty on the outside, moist on the inside and stays together making it the perfect sandwich bread.

This is what your starter should look like before you bake bread.

The other thing I learned this week was that raw honey contains amylase. Amylase is an enzyme in your mouth that starts the breakdown of starchy food. If you spread a little raw honey on your bread about 15 minutes before eating it, it will begin to break down the starch in the bread ultimately making it easier on your digestive system. Real food is so cool!

~ Whole Wheat Pumpkin Scones ~

Whole Wheat Pumpkin Scones
2 cups organic sprouted whole wheat pastry flour
2 tsp aluminum free baking powder
1/2 tsp sea salt
1/3 cup organic rapadura
1 tbsp organic cinnamon
1/2 tsp organic nutmeg
1/2 tsp organic ginger
1/4 tsp organic cloves
2 organic free range eggs
1/2 tbsp organic vanilla extract
1/2 cup organic pumpkin puree
1 tbsp organic raw heavy cream
1/2 cup cold organic butter or coconut oil

Preheat oven to 375 and grease a cookie sheet or line with parchment paper. Mix together the pumpkin, cream, vanilla, and one egg and place in the refrigerator while getting the dry stuff ready. Combine flour, salt, baking powder and sugar, stir in the spices. Using a pastry blender work in the cold butter or coconut oil until crumbly and sandy looking. Mix the cold wet ingredients into the dry just until combined. Dough will be sticky but roll out onto a lightly floured surface and make a 7 inch square, quarter with a large knife and then cut each quarter into fours. Beat remaining egg and brush tops of scones, bake until lightly brown on bottom, about 16 minutes, don't over cook or they will become dry. Place on wire rack to cool, these are really yummy and I can't wait to make some more.

*I did get the original recipe from somewhere else in cyberspace but couldn't find were. My adjustments where only with the types of ingredient used, not the amount of ingredient*

~ MMM...Biscuits ~

Seriously, it took me less time to make biscuits from scratch yesterday than it would have taken me to open a package of Pillsbury dough and they were about a hundred times better. Once you get the hang of it, cooking from scratch is actually faster than fooling around with a box meal, all it takes is a little practice.

Here's the recipe: Drop Biscuits

2 cups organic sprouted whole wheat pastry flour
1 Tbsp organic rapadura sugar
3 tsp of non-aluminum baking powder
1 tsp sea salt
1/2 cup of organic coconut or palm oil
1 cup of organic milk

Heat oven to 450 degrees and grease a large cookie sheet. Mix dry ingredients together in bowl and cut in coconut oil with a pastry blender until you have fine crumbs. Stir in milk until dough is soft and sticky.
I used my tbsp to put 12 dollops of dough on my pan. Bake for 10 minutes, until lightly brown on top and bottom. Serve with some honey butter and just see how long they last, mine lasted about 7 minutes with six of us.