Crazy for Cranberries

I walked by the book Cranberry Thanksgiving by Wende and Harry Devlin many times without even considering it.  The cover did not appeal to me at all.  Then I saw the book mentioned on Almost Unschoolers and decided to give it a chance.  The interesting thing about all of this is that the book is all about not judging people by their appearance, or, you could say, not judging a book by it's cover.  I also used the book as an opportunity to talk to my children about the fact that some strangers may look nice but not act nice and they should never go anywhere with a stranger no matter how nice they appear to be.  I use every opportunity to get that message across to them.

There is also a recipe for cranberry bread at the end of the book, and when a fictional book has a recipe, I have to try it.  There is an option to put raisins in the bread, but we made ours all cranberry.  If I knew the kids would not like it (they took one bite and said, "yuck"), I probably would have added walnuts to the recipe.  Actually, chocolate chips would be good in the bread too.  This reminds me of my favorite ice cream made at a local creamery; they call it Cranberry Bog and it is cranberry ice cream with walnuts and chocolate chips.  It is SO good!  Anyway, my husband and I both enjoyed the cranberry bread! 

I posed a few questions to the kiddos while we were waiting for the bread to bake:

1. Do you think cranberries bounce?
2. Do you think cranberries will float or sink?
3. What do you think cranberries look like on the inside?

We had fun hypothesizing and then testing each hypothesis.  Cranberries were rolling all over the kitchen.
Because we were bouncing cranberries, I had to pull out our copy of Clarence:  The Cranberry Who Couldn't Bounce by Jim Coogan.

We actually met the author when he came  to our local public library for a special story hour about two years ago.  The book is a nice way to talk about perseverance. 

After making the bread, I had a few cranberries left over and I could not resist making a batch of cranberry tinted pink play dough.  
 

I used my favorite play dough recipe and followed the cranberry steeping directions from Almost Unschoolers.  I just poured boiling water over a 1/4 cup of cranberries and let it sit for a while.  Then I stuck it in the microwave for a minute or two to get the most color from the cranberries.  I used the cranberry dyed water in this recipe:

1 c. flour
1/2 c. salt
1 T. cooking oil
1 T. cream of tartar
1 c. cranberry dyed water
1 t. extract (I used vanilla; see comment below)
1 t. glitter (optional)
food coloring (I did not need food coloring for this dough; the cranberries took care of that!  R loved the pretty bubblegum pink color!)

I measured the ingredients into a nonstick pot and stirred until well mixed.  Then I cooked it over medium heat until the dough pulled away from the sides and formed a ball.  I dumped it out onto a cutting board and once it was cool enough to touch, I kneaded it until smooth.

I knew from Almost Unschoolers' experience that there would be no cranberry fragrance, so I added some vanilla extract just because I like the dough to smell good.

We might have to continue the cranberry fun because I saw that there is a Cranberry Christmas book by the same authors as the Cranberry Thanksgiving book!  FYI:  the cranberry is the state fruit of Massachusetts (our home state)!