Recipe Revamp (no added sugar + fruity makeover) Fruit Bread for MK’s Fruit Bread French Toast!

Fruit Bread French Toast. gluten free. no added sugar. Mary Kate Kopec. Love and Big Hugs!

Fruit Bread for MK’s Favorite Food: Fruit Bread French Toast

Liberally coat glass bread pan with cooking spray (or could line with baking paper and spray that)

  • 1 3/8 cup oat flour (I buy Bob’s Red Mill Oats, gluten-free, and grind in my food processor.)
  • 1/8 cup ground flaxseed (Bob’s Red Mill, gluten-free)
  • 1/8 cup chia seeds
  • 3/8 tsp baking soda
  • 1/4 tsp baking powder
  • 1/8 tsp salt
  • 1 1/2 tsp cinnamon
  • ½ cup finely chopped pecans (optional, but delicious)
  • 1 cup frozen blueberries (I especially like the wild blueberries, as they are smaller, and more nutritious, and they get super distributed throughout the bread! Yummy!)
  • 1/2 cup frozen cherries, chopped (as finely as you’d like … the finer you chop, the more distribution)
  • 1/4 cup frozen peaches, chopped (as finely as you’d like … the finer you chop, the more distribution)
Fruit Bread French Toast. gluten free. no added sugar. Mary Kate Kopec. Love and Big Hugs! Snap of a double batch in progress!
  • 1 ½ tsp vanilla
  • 1 egg
  • 1/2 c milk (can use water/milk substitute)
Fruit Bread French Toast. gluten free. no added sugar. Mary Kate Kopec. Love and Big Hugs! Double batch, mixed and sitting in bread pans for 5 minutes before baking.

Bake for 45 minutes to an hour.  I look for medium brown loaf edges (thus, glass baking dish, no baking paper for me).  I also use the toothpick test.  Here’s the thing.  You are looking for “dryer” but still crumbly on the toothpick.  Depending on where you poke, the fruit in the bread can “lie” to you, making the bread look gooey wet when it isn’t.  So try a few pokes.  Mostly, in my oven, I just go for about an hour and call it good.  The bread will likely be a bit moist, but it’s DELICIOUS this way.

Allow to cool in pan for a while (long enough you can handle touching the pan).  Then use a firm, but pliable spatula (nylon, silicone) to dislodge sides and gently pry from bottom of pan.

Once completely cool, you can use a bread knife to cut into slices.  (If you cut while hot/warm, it super crumbles … and although the crumbles still taste yummy, it’s harder to make French Toast … and even though I tried bread pudding to “save” a once crumbled loaf, it wasn’t as good as the French Toast … so patience, my beautiful blossom.  Patience.)

Fruit Bread French Toast. gluten free. no added sugar. Mary Kate Kopec. Love and Big Hugs!
  • Beat one egg with a hearty splash of milk
  • Individually dip 2 slices of bread into mixture and add to low heat pan with ghee (or oil/butter of choice for non sticking)
  • Sprinkle wet side with cinnamon
  • When bottom side down is golden brown of choice, flip and sizzle second side (may need to add a little extra ghee/butter/oil … the added cinnamon can “dry up” the oil.

In separate sizzle pan, add dab of ghee and “omelet up” or scramble the remaining egg mixture.  I add cheese for a cheezy egg!

This recipe revamp comes from this delicious basic oat sandwich bread recipe I found online here.  I dropped the sugar.  Added a bunch of ingredients until perfection.  And voila.

I have so much gratitude to give to Hungry Hobby for their savory oat sandwich bread recipe!  It saved my newly minted and ongoing gluten-free life.  I needed “bread” options, and this recipe is a life saver!!!

I have used this basic bread for SO many variations: “rye,” pumpkin, sweet potato, fruit, plain sandwich, & cinnamon raisin.  I’m still planning to try variants with apples, and also I want to try an “oatmeal cookie” version using my highly sought after oatmeal cookie raisin recipe as a foundation.  So … more to come … if you holla for more!

Now, in all honesty, I think this Fruit Bread is incredibly delicious!!!  But my honeybun thinks it’s not yummy at all.  The difference between us is the sugar.  I don’t eat it any more, or much at all, and he still does.  He’s still in love with all the old gluten things I used to be able to eat: cake, gluten bread, cookies … sugar.  So … if you loves sugar, too, and fear you might not find this bread sweet enough, just add up to a tbsp of your sugar of choice.

One more quick note … in case you are comparing to the Hungry Hobby recipe and wondering why I added chia seeds … well … 2 reasons: 1. they are incredibly nutritious and OH SO GOOD for you, and 2. they absorb moisture like champions, so they help with the excess moisture caused by the addition of the fruit … win win!

And that my delightful dollops of Fruit Bread French Toasty goodness is it.

My favorite food!!!  Second to this is my Incredibly Low Sugar Vanilla Pudding Soup … which I could gobble and gobble and gobble for days on end.  I haven’t added the recipe here, cuz my honeybun be thinking that’s crazy … ain’t no one gonna like my “non” sweet nilla pudding.  Well, if you think you might, holla, and I’ll add it here.  Cuz to me, it’s INCREDIBLY good!

Happy nutritious eating!

Thanks for being here with me and sharing time and trying my happy things!!!

Love you so much!

Big huggin you tight!

Love and Big Hugs Mary Kate

Focus On What You Can Do

focus on what you can do.  Mary Kate Kopec.  Love And Big Hugs.

Dear Gorgeous Souls!

Focus on what you can do, and you will feel a happier and healthier difference in your life!

Here’s you walking along in all your sunshiny potential …

focus on what you can do.  Mary Kate Kopec.  Love and Big Hugs.

…when suddenly, DRAMA!

focus on what you can do.  Mary Kate Kopec.  Love and Big Hugs.

It could be you caught a news clip. Or you got some bad news. Or someone is mean to you. … This list can unfortunately go on and on, as I’m sure you know. Life can be like that. But drama happens with you willingly engaging in it, or with it [drama] trying to force itself on you.

Either way … drama is not good. It’s a downward spiral that can lead to stress, which leads to inflammation, which leads illness, disease, and even for some, death. Wuuuuut????

focus on what you can do. Mary Kate Kopec. Love and Big Hugs.

The bottom line: Unhappiness hurts you!

But there is a solution here. It’s easily said, but if you are a drama junkie, it’s not so easily done. Drama is eye catching. It incites the senses. It irks you. Compels you to engage and respond. You’ve got experiences. Opinions. Facts. Feelings. And the energy drama can stir up inside you can’t stay in there. It needs to get out of you. You need to express yourself. Be heard. Be important.

The problems is that a lot of the time, how we express ourselves in the midst of drama isn’t always helpful. It doesn’t fix the problem. It doesn’t resolve the issue. And we end up going around and around with our drama and the stress it creates, and the downward spiral goes even deeper.

Thank goodness we have the power of choice in our own lives! And the “simple” solution that we can choose:

Focus On What YOU CAN DO!

focus on what you can do. Mary Kate Kopec. Love and Big Hugs.

If it’s a situation, relationship, a moment in time, or an experience happening around you, near you, or with you stuck in the middle, ask yourself: Is this something I can personally fix?  Is there something I can do to help resolve this situation or make it better? Do I really need to be around this person? Do I really need to do this thing?

If the answer is NO, get out of there!  If you can’t help, but you are engaging anyway, you are putting yourself into a moment that will make you feel helpless or inert or some other negative something … but if there’s nothing you can do, except be in the middle of whatever it is, you are taking on an unnecessary stress burden. And the negativity you gain from it is something that you will then have to deal with for yourself. Why do that to yourself?

If the answer is yes – FANTASTIC! You can make a difference, and that can make you feel really good! You can have a positive impact and feel useful! So then:

  • figure out what you can do
  • make an action plan
  • do your action plan
  • then get out of there!!!

Be effective! Make a difference! Then move on!!! And heal yourself from any lingering stress that came from the efforts of helping resolve or fix the drama!

If it’s informational, ask yourself this: Is this something I need to learn or know?  What do I need to learn from it or know about it?

If the answer is NO, get out of there! If you don’t need to know it; if it won’t grow you, help you become a better person, etc; if it isn’t something that will help you become more informed so you can make better choices, then … honestly … you don’t need to know it. It’s information that will only burden you unnecessarily.

But if the answer is yes – FANTASTIC! It’s an opportunity to grow you, become a more informed person … all you have to do is handle the difficulty of whatever the dramatic informational moment is. So:

  • learn it
  • know it
  • then get out of there!!!
focus on what you can do. Mary Kate Kopec. Love and Big Hugs.

So let’s take a quick moment to talk about how to activate your choice. How can you focus on what you can do? Well, start by asking yourself the questions above, and then, if you find yourself having to engage in the drama – set limits and establish boundaries. And if you don’t have to engage in the drama, then eliminate it from your life entirely.

Setting limits and boundaries comes in handy for negative or toxic people or situations in your life you are not prepared to stop engaging in yet, or that you don’t know yet how to stop engaging in.

When you have to engage in the drama:

  • set your limits and boundaries
  • stick to them (Value yourself. Love yourself. And be strong for you!)
  • get in, get done, get out
  • then self-care and TLC yourself back into wellness!

Eliminating the drama entirely from your life comes in handy for easier, less complicated dramas … like when the media jerks us around like string puppets, playing on our emotions, over sensationalizing the mundane or insignificant, etc. We really don’t need that in our lives, so tuning out, turning it off, and ignoring it is a great step to protecting ourselves: emotionally, mentally, physically … the whole of us.

focus on what you can do. Mary Kate Kopec. Love and Big Hugs.

For self-care, remember to do things like:

As a general intention to help you be happy and healthy, separate yourself from all of the drama you can.  And whatever you have to deal with, find positive ways to manage, cope, heal, and recover. Here’s the important thing about drama.  It’s drama.  It’s a conflict of intentions that creates an emotional response.  If it is not drama that you need to or want to experience, then get it out of your life.  Because drama creates stress, which causes inflammation, which leads to illness and disease.  And you are an important person.  You are valuable and irreplaceable.  When you are happy and healthy you function better for yourself and for those around you.  You are worth your love and self-care.  And you are far more important than so much of the drama we experience every single day. So focus on what you can do, and you will feel the happy, healthy difference it makes in your life!

YAY!!!

Until next week …

Loving you so big and brightly!!! I’m sending you light and love to hug you the biggest!!!
May your days be drama-free, and when they can’t, surround yourself with people who will love you, support you, help you, and be the best with you!

Love and Big Hugs,

Love and Big Hugs Mary Kate

More Happiness from Mary Kate

Find more happiness, love, big hugs, support, gratitude, POSitude, and Self-Care in these POSitude cards!

Needing some self-care, love and support? Wanting hugs? Treat yourself or someone you love to these Big Loving, Big Hugging daily inspirational, motivational, and empowering POSitude cards! They really can make a big difference in your day!!!

POSitude Cards.  Mary Kate Kopec.  Love and Big Hugs!  Found at Etsy

Get Your POSitude On!

Feel happier! Supported! Loved! Hugged!

Bring brightness and goodness into your day, and into your life!

What beautiful souls like you think about their POSitude cards!

These cards are colorful and cheerful!  They stay on my desk at work and have made for great conversation with colleagues.  I look forward to choosing my daily pick me up.  I reflect on my current mood or what inspiration I need for the day.  I do have a few favorites that I’ve used more than once or have displayed longer than just a day.   

These cards remind me to stay positive and believe in myself!

Mary Kate Kopec.  testimonial

Stephanie Shay, 4th grade teacher

Mary Kate Kopec Love and Big Hugs

I love my POSitude cards!  I pick one to display on my refrigerator for the week.  Reading the card makes me happy and gives me a variety of ways to stay positive in my daily life.  It has also become a conversation piece for all who enter my kitchen.

Mary Kate Kopec. testimonial

Karen Henry, Retired 4th Grade Teacher, Personal Assistant

Mary Kate Kopec Love and Big Hugs

The Positude cards have made a difference for setting the tone during meetings.  I have set them in the middle of the meeting table and while we are settling in, people pick them up and read them. This small gesture makes a huge difference in the quality of the conversations we have during our 1:1 meetings.

Mary Kate Kopec. testimonial

Mary Freer, University Research Department Administrator

Mary Kate Kopec Love and Big Hugs

I love my POSitude cards!  They are so cute, and the messages are very uplifting and inspiring!

Mary Kate Kopec. testimonial

Mary McMurtry, Retired Bookkeeper, Mom, Grandmom

Mary Kate Kopec Love and Big Hugs
Promo Image of POSitude cards on Etsy

Get inspired every day with a deck of my new POSitude cards! Each deck has 35 different full-color, fun, happy POSitudes (36 cards total, with one card sharing suggestions on how to get the most out your POSitudes.) Available in my Etsy shop. Check them out and learn more, now!

You can find these POSitude cards in my new ETSY shop!!!

Looking for self-care to share love and big hugs for all ages?

How a treasured friendship lost gave me something life changing to be grateful for! Lub's Very Happy Day! Mary Kate Kopec. Love and Big Hugs.

Lub’s Very Happy Day! is filled with delightful brightness and big huggy smiles!

How a treasured friendship lost gave me something life changing to be grateful for! Lub's Very Happy Day! Mary Kate Kopec. Love and Big Hugs.

Lub is the happiest, PINKest, most love-filled monster, Ever! Her big, PINK heart is always with her, and it beams brightly in everything she does!

How a treasured friendship lost gave me something life changing to be grateful for! Lub's Very Happy Day! Mary Kate Kopec. Love and Big Hugs.

Lub loves you!

Join Lub as she shares with you her love and very happy, monster-ifically delightful day! Feel playful and bright, smile big, and be happy! Have fun and be cheerful!

You can find copies of Lub’s Very Happy Day! to adopt at Amazon!

focus on what you can do. Mary Kate Kopec. Love And Big Hugs.

How a Treasured Friendship Lost Gave Me Something Life Changing to be Grateful for!
(… and how it’s made my life a happier and better place to be!)

How a treasured friendship lost gave me something life changing to be grateful for!  Mary Kate Kopec.  Love and Big Hugs.

Hello Beautiful Blossoms!

I have a Thanksgiving story of Gratitude-Giving to share with you.  It’s all about how a treasured friendship lost gave me something life changing to be grateful for, and how it’s made my life a happier and better place to be!

Treasured friendship lost

Has it ever happened to you?  You’ve had a friendship with someone who simply brightened your heart with so much happiness and big smiles, who made a positive difference in your life, but then time, distance, circumstance … life … happens and your friendship is lost, but the love is still in your heart?

It has happened to me with great sadness.  I will miss my friend forever, but I am grateful for every wonderful, life changing gift I got from our friendship.

I know I’m not alone in this as I’ve talked to other gorgeous souls who have experienced friendship loss as well.  We talk about how great it was when we had our friend in our lives, and invariably the conversation always drifts to wondering … What went wrong?  What happened?  Why did our friend let go?  Sometimes we get answers.  Sometimes we don’t.  Sometimes we can reconnect.  Sometimes we can’t.

My thoughts for my friend-lost and my shared wisdom to the gorgeous souls I talk to … I take from the book/movie Eat, Pray, Love … send them your light and love and wish them well wherever they are in the world and in whatever they are doing.  I feel this truly and deeply in the depths of my soul.  Yes!  For as much as I miss my friend, there is a reason I miss her so much – she was a delight in my life – and I wish her goodness, healthiness, and love in all that she does, even if it means without me.

For as much sadness as I’ve felt from the loss of this friendship, I have so much to be grateful for, and especially as it is Thanksgiving and a time for Gratitude-Giving, I want to share with you the amazing life changing gifts I received that made this friendship so worth the pain of losing it.

Life changing gifts

To start, I am grateful for every single day I got to spend with my friend … for all our laughter, shared love, shared wisdom, shared goals, shared philosophies, supporting one another … the absolute delight of feeling fully connected to another person in this giant lonely world and getting to spend time with her.  What a gift!

And she gave me another gift; one I never saw coming.  It changed my life, forever.  She gave me the gift of encouragement.  It helped me grow a new confidence in myself I’d never had.  She saw a creative talent in me that I didn’t feel was worthy of sharing.  She disagreed.  She told me my art looked like me.  It had all my happiness in it.  That my art was a visual embodiment of my voice. 

Then, she gave me the gift of knowing … she taught me how to use Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator.

I started out slowly.  Figuring out the digi-tech part of art.  Playing around.  Birthing a new craft.  And as my confidence grew, I tried new and bigger things.

Mary Kate Kopec Love and Big Hugs

Living my gifts

And this is how Lub’s Very Happy Day story came about!

A few years ago, while we were still friends, I decided to create a children’s story and share it with her as a prezzie.  She – like me – loves children’s picture books to fall asleep to.  … You know how life can be stressful?  Well, at nighttime, you want to fall asleep, not being stressed.  You need to let go and relax.  You want to go to bed with good juju running around in your head so you can have happy dreams, not stressy ones.  A novel, although a very happy escape … if you get sucked in (we’re talking hours of awesome reading), you lose sleep and rest.  So to help us calm down, me and my friend love to read happy kid’s books.  They’re quick.  Cute.  Fun.  Often silly and squee.  And help you calm down and sleep sweet. 

So I thought, hey, why don’t I write a cute, happy kid’s book for us to enjoy before sleepy-time?  I wanted it to be filled with happy images of favorite things.  So that’s exactly what I did.

  • I love cute monsters – so of course Lub would have to be adorable.
  • I love PINK – so, lol, of course – Lub’s the PINKest monster, EVER!
  • I love LOVE.  Love in all it’s kindness.  Giving and sharing.  Compassion.  Big Heartedness.  Playfulness.  Silliness.  All of it!
  • I love nature and being outdoors.  The sunshine.  The woodland creatures.  Adorable buggy boos.  The flowers and the trees.  And oh how I love bright, sunny, warm blue skies with fluffy cotton ball clouds floating by … and all the imaginary shapes I can see!
  • I love reading, creating, playing, eating healthy snacks.
  • I love spending happy time with friends and loved ones.

So of course, Lub’s Very Happy Day! is inspired and guided by all this love and happy goodness.  It’s filled with delightful brightness and big huggy smiles! (It’s self-care in picture form!)

I can’t look at Lub & her picture pages without smiling so big!  For me, she has that silly something that just makes me feel better instantly. :0)

Lub was born from all my squeelightful monstery pink-hearted happiness and giddy clapping to brighten our days and sweeten our nights!  Her very presence on paper is a silly monsterification of all the giddy love in my heart!  And she’s been keeping me company at bedtime ever since.

Not too long ago, a friend – who is also a retired elementary school teacher – was visiting me, and we were in my studio.  She saw Lub’s book, and she smiled huge (Lub will do that to you!).  My teacher friend asked me about Lub; what her story was; and how it came about.  She started flipping through the pages, and page after page, her smile grew bigger.  She told me I should publish the story.  That she thought it was really good!

I was all like, “Really? … Like share with other people kind of good?”  I had written it for fun and bedtime positive imagery, never thinking to put Lub into the world.

But my friend insisted. 

I was moderately convinced.  My artwork in my personal copy was from my first days in the digi-painting world.  My doodlebug fingers hadn’t grown their confidence bones quite yet, back then.  So I asked around to other school teachers I know.  Every single time I got the same thing.  Share Lub!  She’s adorable and so happy and so fun!!!

Fueled by all the excitement of how easily other peeps were falling in love with Lub, I decided to update the artwork.  For as much as I loved her and everybody else seemed to be loving her, too, I knew my art could be cuter with my improved and more experienced doodlebug digi-skills.

Along with redrawing and updating all of Lub’s artwork, I learned that Amazon print services requires a minimum of 24 pages.  Lub’s story fell short, as I hadn’t written it to meet any page requirements.  I thought about the power of creativity and coloring and art to sooth, heal, detress, reduce anxiety, and relax, so I decided to add in some Lub coloring and activity pages for fun. 

How a treasured friendship lost gave me something life changing to be grateful for! Lub's Very Happy Day! Mary Kate Kopec. Love and Big Hugs.

And voila!  Here we are today.  Lub’s Very Happy Day is a story come to life to share happiness and love with like-minded and pink-hearted monsters who are giddy clapping for more POSitude and happiness to brighten their days and sweeten their dreams.

My life: a happier and better place to be!

This is how a treasured friendship lost gave me something life changing to be grateful for!  And how it’s made my life a happier and better place to be!  I have learned how to be a digi-art doodlebug!  I’ve grown my skill with experience.  And I’ve gained confidence in my doodlebug digi-art skills and having a visual voice to share my love and happiness with you!  I feel this is a gift that pays forward.  Now that I’m digi-art doodlebug, I have another medium to share all my Love and Big Hugs with you, and this makes me so very happy!!!  Especially as, let’s face it … most of us are visual people.  A picture is worth a thousand words.  And my art is me all over the page sharing all the PINKness in my heart to help you feel better, more loved, happier, and healthier.  And this is gratitude in my heart!!!

I hope you give yourself the gift of Love and Big Hugs all day long today on this Thanksgiving day!  And every day.  May your day be filled with love, happiness, and healthiness, and may you be surrounded by peeps who get you, love you, and cherish you for all the goodness in your heart!

How a treasured friendship lost gave me something life changing to be grateful for! Lub's Very Happy Day! Mary Kate Kopec. Love and Big Hugs.

Lub is the happiest, PINKest, most love-filled monster, Ever! Her big, PINK heart is always with her, and it beams brightly in everything she does!

How a treasured friendship lost gave me something life changing to be grateful for! Lub's Very Happy Day! Mary Kate Kopec. Love and Big Hugs.

Lub loves you!

Join Lub as she shares with you her love and very happy, monster-ifically delightful day! Feel playful and bright, smile big, and be happy! Have fun and be cheerful as Lub lovingly models healthy behaviors, like:

  • Being happy
  • Smiling big
  • Having fun
  • Being kind
  • Spending fun time with oneself
  • Having independence/self-reliance
  • Being imaginative
  • Having positive friendships
  • Napping
  • Eating well
  • Having compassion
  • Enjoying silliness
  • Valuing companionship
  • Being grateful

Watch your child’s face brighten with big smiles at every adorable page turn. Kiss them goodnight with happiness floating in their heads and big smiles filling their hearts!

Additional Features of Lub’s Very Happy Day:

  • Adorable, bright, full color, happy art and images spark big smiles
  • 6 Delightfully fun coloring activity pages included
  • Positive, lighthearted, and encouraging
  • Fun to read and experience

Feel Lub’s love, happiness, and fun! Bring her home to share now!

How a treasured friendship lost gave me something life changing to be grateful for! Lub's Very Happy Day! Mary Kate Kopec. Love and Big Hugs.

Find more gratitude, POSitude, and Self-Care from me at Etsy!

You can also check out my new ETSY shop!!!

Get Your POSitude On!

Feel happier! Supported! Loved! Hugged!

Bring brightness and goodness into your day, and into your life!

Get inspired every day with a deck of my new POSitude cards! Available in my Etsy shop. Check them out and learn more, now!

Promo Image of POSitude cards on Etsy

Until next week …

Happy Thanksgiving! I am grateful for you! Big loving you and hugging you tight!

Love and Big Hugs Mary Kate
How a treasured friendship lost gave me something life changing to be grateful for! Mary Kate Kopec. Love and Big Hugs.