Happy Thanksgiving!!

I hope you are all having a wonderful Thanksgiving Day. Ours has been nice. I perhaps overdid it a bit, but that's no big surprise. :)

I thought I would share the menu I served today.

Lasagna (yes, frozen; sue me - I'm pregnant and exhausted!)

Pioneer Woman's Sweet Potatoes - made this last year; I love it! The only thing is I add cinnamon to both the sweet potato mixture and the topping. (Sorry Christi -- forgot to tell you I did that!)

Browned Butter Pecan Pie - hmmm...new recipe for me. Smelled delish. Tasted good. But it didn't set up well at all. Not sure what the deal was.

And my mom brought:

Spicy Brown Sugar Carrots - I'll be honest. I didn't like this one. I don't really like my carrots sweetened and spiced in this way. Just my preference!

And of course, there were other things served, but nothing I can link to. :)

In other news, the Sprout decided that my grandmother is not so bad after all!!

Pumpkin Bread with Cream Cheese Filling

I wouldn't go so far as to say "I'm back!" but I'm getting close. :) It's been a rough few weeks...okay months, and it's just taken the wind out of my sails. But I love baking, especially during the holidays, so I just couldn't stay away.

I stumbled upon a recipe for pumpkin bread on Joy of Baking that I just had to try, and yesterday was the day. Man, it took more energy than I thought it would!! I thought it turned out very well. It was quite moist and had a good taste to it. Toasting the pecans added an extra flavor that I think was worth it. I only added nuts to one of the loaves so the other would be toddler-friendly, and I tasted that one as well -- if you don't like/can't have nuts, you won't miss them if you leave them out!

As I was mixing it, the cream cheese filling was thinner than I expected it to be. I'm not sure if that was due to user error, or if that's just how it is! I did mix it in my mixer instead of a food processor, so that may have had something to do with it. Honestly, I'd like to try the bread without the cream cheese layer and see if it makes a difference in the flavor.

I sent some of the bread to work with D this morning. I received several text messages back that people were requesting the recipe, so I take that as a good sign!!

The original recipe can be found here.

Enjoy!!

Share Our Strength

Share Our Strength is a national organization that is fighting to end childhood hunger in America. I have recently discovered that Domino/C&H Sugar has launched a fundraiser on Twitter. For each time that #NoKidHungry is mentioned in a tweet, Domino/C&H Sugar will donate $1 to the Share Our Strength organization, up to a $10,000 donation.

Even if you don't use Twitter (um, like me!) I wanted to pass this along. This is a worthy cause, so go online, get a Twitter account if you don't have one, and help out!!

Confession time: I do actually have a Twitter account, I just don't use it -- I can't keep up!! :)

Banana Buttermilk Pancakes

This morning, while trying to decide what to fix for breakfast (ie deciding between waffles and pancakes) I noticed one lonely ripe banana sitting on the counter. Banana pancakes! That was the answer. I knew that somewhere in my files I had a recipe for banana pancakes. Indeed I did, although it had been several years since I'd made them. The recipe actually called for two bananas, but in my notes at the bottom I had made a notation to cut the recipe in half. Perfect!!

I tried passing these pancakes off as "normal" to the oldest, but he noticed something was off. Never mind that in the aforementioned notes I had written down that he loved them, but he didn't like them this time around. Oh well. Lucky for him there was something else he could have! Anyway, the rest of us enjoyed them, and I was able to make use of that last banana. :)

Banana Buttermilk Pancakes

1 egg
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1 cup buttermilk*
2 Tbsp vegetable oil
1 Tbsp sugar
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp nutmeg**
1 ripe banana, mashed

Heat a skillet or griddle, lightly grease with oil or butter. In a medium bowl, stir together the flours, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, salt and nutmeg. In a separate bowl, mix together the banana, egg, buttermilk and oil. Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and stir until mixed (don't overmix!). Cook on griddle and eat! ;)

*I actually used dry buttermilk powder for this today and it worked just fine. I love having some of that on hand for when I'm out of the real stuff!

**Instead of nutmeg, I used 1/4 tsp of a baking spice that I have.

***This makes a thin batter. If you prefer thicker pancakes, slightly decrease the amount of buttermilk.

Turkey Day is on its way!!

It's hard for me to even believe it's November. But it is, and that means that Thanksgiving will be here before we know it.

I have absolutely no idea what our plans are for this year because 1) I have no energy, 2) eating good food sounds wonderful, but it doesn't always work well for me right now, and 3) for some unknown reason my 19-month old is currently terrified of my grandmother, and she usually comes over for Thanksgiving.

Now, if you ask my husband he would probably just say to "skip it" this year. Except for the pumpkin pie. He loves pumpkin pie. In case I haven't mentioned it before, I'm not really a pumpkin pie kind of girl...give me sweet potato instead any day! Anyway, skipping it just isn't going to happen, but I'm not sure what will happen. I guess we shall see...

So, what are your plans for turkey day this year??

I'll leave you with this, just because it made me LOL today...