The Third Day of Thankful

Today, I’m thankful for pumpkin bread.  Baking pumpkin bread is my official signal of the start of the holiday season; it just isn’t Thanksgiving until I’ve got a couple of loaves baking in the oven.  Right now, my first batch of the season is filling the house with the wonderful smells of pumpkin and spice, and it will smell like this for at least a couple of days.  I smell pumpkin bread, and I’m immediately filled with all the happy memories of Thanksgiving, and even Christmas (though I hate combining the two holidays, I guess it’s unavoidable at times!)

I love holiday traditions, but strangely, my family has almost no recurring traditions at all.  Instead, I’ve created holiday traditions with my friends; my favorite is with LB and her daughter Isa.   Every December, we have lunch or dinner followed by the Nutcracker or another Christmas themed production, followed by hot chocolate and presents at my house.  It’s something we plan to do for years to come, and is a special time the three of us can look forward to sharing together every year.

I’m thankful for pumpkin bread because it’s a tradition that I have on my own, but it symbolizes all the traditions I hope to form with my children, and my sister’s family in the years ahead.

I’m also thankful for pumpkin bread because it’s delicious.  Especially hot from the oven, or just out of the toaster with a little butter.  Yummy in my tummy!

Shannon’s Favorite Pumpkin Bread

3 cups sugar

1 cup canola oil

3 eggs

2 cups (1 15oz can) of pumpkin

½ teaspoon baking powder

½ teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon baking soda

2 teaspoons cinnamon

1 teaspoon ground cloves

1 teaspoon nutmeg

3 cups flour

Preheat oven to 350F.

Mix above ingredients (in order as listed – unless you want to be really good and sift the flour with the baking powder, salt and baking soda, which is better, but I’m always too impatient to do it the right way).  Bake in two loaf pans for 50-60 minutes. 

I usually play around with the spices – today the cloves smelled really good, so I added a few more dashes in.  Occasionally, I’ll sprinkle the top of the loaves with cinnamon or even a dash of nutmeg.  It’s never the same every time, but that’s half the fun!  The second loaf makes a good gift – or freezes well, if you can keep it around long enough to make it into the freezer!

the picture above is a bunch of cloves, freshly picked off the tree