Happy Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day

As is our family tradition, every birthday is celebrated with a special birthday breakfast, usually picnic style in the bedroom of the birthday person. This Christmas we extended it to a celebrate the birth of Christ...all warm and cozy in front our fireplace. And today, you guess it, our family enjoyed a special breakfast (for dinner) in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. around the dinner table. In addition to the delicious food pictured below, we enjoyed some fun conversation inspired by the food, which was inspired by this important holiday.

It has come to be expected by our kids that birthday breakfasts include cinnamon rolls (we usually for the Pillsbury kind with orange glaze). Because this is now a staple celebratory pastry and I really want to reduce the amount of processed foods we eat, it was on of my bucket list of recipes to learn for this year. I followed this recipe and love the use of orange juice and orange zest. Buh-bye Pillsbury.

With some of the leftover juice, I sprinkled it on our fruit salad. We usually do one very "fun" fruit for birthday breakfast (like mango), but a fruit salad teaches us a lot about appreciation of diversity. The different shapes, colors, textures, and tastes of all the fruit are what makes fruit salad so great! I didn't  mention this to the kids, but it makes me cringe to hear the US referred to as "the melting pot." It sounds like we're all supposed to be exactly the same...kinda like if you pureed my fruit salad. Then you can't appreciate all the unique things that each fruit contributes!

Next going clockwise is a fried egg. You've probably heard of the children's activity where you show them a brown egg and a white egg and talk about how we make look different on the outside, but inside we're all the same.  I can see this going wrong...another "We're-all-the-same" "Our-differences-don't-matter" type-thing. In my opinion, differences do matter, and we should recognize them and appreciate them. So we did. Quite simply, different hens make different eggs, as do ducks, geese, etc. Then Bo transitioned to the more complex issue of judging by first appearances and also brought in MLK's famous quote, "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character." We couldn't tell much difference between the two hen eggs based on what was on the inside. The colors and sizes were slightly different, but both kinds were good enough to eat. Once we cooked them, we couldn't tell which was which too, but everyone gladly ate what they were served.

Lastly, we had bacon. We made no significant connection there. It's just another special treat for a special day!

In a future posts, I'll review what we have been doing for the past week or so to teach about Dr. Martin Luther King and also emphasize of the importance of this national holiday. I hope you had a great day off, if you did! If you didn't do something meaningful to you or to your family in honor of MLK yet, I encourage you to do it. It's not too late! It doesn't need to be grand either. Let's just somehow recognize the impact Dr. King has had on this country and the civil rights movement. Let me know how you celebrated too! I like getting new ideas.