It’s a Wrap!

Did you know that today is National Homemade Bread day?  I didn’t either, until I saw it on Tina’s  Carrotsncake blog.  But hey, any excuse to stop grading and do some baking is fine with me!

We’re leaving town on Thursday, and I opened a MASSIVE can of pumpkin puree last week, so I knew I wanted to make a pumpkin bread of some kind.  I did a little sleuthing on the intraweb, and found several recipe candidates.  All of them had a lot of sugar, oil, etc. 

I decided to loosely follow/combine a few of the recipes, while making some healthy swaps.  Instead of oil, I pureed a banana (which also needed to be used up before Thursday).  I know some people don’t like the whole “Swap a banana or some applesauce for oil” thing in baking, but honestly, I’ve never minded it.  Sure, you can tell a difference in the way it tastes.  But to me, that difference is just that it tastes healthier! 

Anyway, the recipes also called for ALL all-purpose flour, so I substituted 1/2 the cup of regular flour for whole wheat. 

Finally, the recipe called for a whole cup of sugar, but I cut it down to just a half.  I figured the banana would be adding extra, natural sweetness anyway. 

The Final Recipe:

Dry Ingredients:

1 cup all purpose flour

1/2 cup whole wheat flour

1/2 cup sugar

1 tsp. baking soda

1/2 tsp. cinammon

1/2 tsp. nutmeg

1/4 tsp. ginger

1/4 tsp. cloves

Wet Ingredients:

1 cup pumpkin puree

2 eggs

1 banana, mashed

Preheat oven to 350.  Sift together dry ingredients.  Mix wet ingredients together, and combine with dry ingredients.   Pour into two mini loaf pans.  Garnish with pepitas and flax seeds (optional).  Bake 35-45 minutes, or until a wooden skewer inserted into the middle of the loaf can be removed cleanly.

Final product:

And…

Then, I broke for lunch!

Lunch was: Ezekial wrap with Sabra Hummus (love of my life), Laughing Cow cheese (mmmmm…), mushrooms, spinach, and pomegranate seeds, nuked in the microwave for 30 seconds.  Yum.

Strange combo, but delicious!

Then, it was teaching alllllllllll afternoon (I don’t know who’s more ready for Thanksgiving break– me, or my students), and a special event– a reading by Dinty Moore!  He read from his new book, Between Panic and Desire, which we promptly bought a copy of.  Love him!

Because of the reading, we didn’t make it back for dinner until 8:30 (which is very late for us for dinner…we’re lame, and usually eat around 6:30).  We were starving, plus we have a lot of random produce that we’re trying to get rid of by Thursday, so dinner was kind of lame:

Quinoa with stir-fried edamame, yellow pepper, carrots, and cherry tomatoes.

Lame, but healthy:

Hopefully, tomorrow night’s eats will be a little more exciting

Good night!