Nope, no Great Pumpkin, it's just me. I've been gone awhile, I know. I've had some things going on that distracted me from this and from my enthusiasm for being in the kitchen, but I'm back and ready to get going all over again!
It's fall, and there seem to be pumpkins everywhere! In the stores, in yards, even in beer! I've never eaten pumpkin outside of the regular pumpkin pie every Thanksgiving, so last week I decided to try pumpkin bread. As usual, I looked for a recipe that had no sugar and found this one on the website for the National Honey Board. To change it up a little, I added cranberries to it. Unfortunately, I didn't have quite enough honey, and I think I overcooked it. It was tasty, but horribly dry. I ate a couple of slices, and then it sat there. I hate that I didn't take a picture of it but, at the moment I wasn't thinking about the blog. Bad me.
This morning, I was struck with the urge to get back in the kitchen. I spent all morning in there! First thing I did was to freeze some bananas. I had no idea that I could do that! I can't wait to use them in all sorts of things. Then I went on a quest to salvage this dry, dry, dry pumpkin bread. It was either use it today, or toss it, which I wasn't excited about doing. My first idea was to make a slice of pumpkin bread french toast.
I simply sliced off a chunk of the bread, dipped it in a mix of egg and milk and cooked it in a pan with some butter - like you would with any other french toast. I didn't add any cinnamon or anything, since it was already full of spices. On the side, I chopped up an apple, sauteed it in some butter, and added some cinnamon and nutmeg. SO GOOD. I will be doing this with apples ALL the time now!! End result of the repurposed pumpkin bread? I'll give it a 3 out of 5. The "french toasting" of it didn't help the fact that it was dry. I didn't have any good maple syrup, so I drizzled some awful "pancake syrup" on the side of the plate to add some moisture. Tasty, but probably one of the worst things for me that I've eaten in awhile!
I still had 3/4 of a loaf of pumpkin bread. We had decided to roast a small chicken for dinner, and came up with the idea of making a stuffing out of the rest of the bread. I was worried about mixing it with celery and onion and how it would all taste.
Here's a semi-accurate version of how I made it. I really kind of just tossed it together, but here's what it was like:
3 cups toasted pumpkin bread croutons
1 stalk of celery, diced
1/3 onion, diced
1 1/2 tbsp poultry seasoning
3 tbsp butter
1/4 - 1/3 cup of chicken broth
handful of dried cranberries
Toss the croutons and cranberries in the poultry seasoning and set aside. Saute the celery and onion in butter until tender. Mix the butter mixture into the croutons, stirring to coat. Add chicken broth to moisten. Place in casserole dish, cover and bake at 350 for 30 minutes. You may want to stir it up half way through, to be sure all the croutons are moistened.
I'll give this reincarnation of the pumpkin bread a 4.5 out of 5. I'll have to try it again with some bread that isn't so dry, but it really was tasty. We've already requested to bring the stuffing to Thanksgiving dinner, and this will be the recipe we use!!
Off to bed now! I'll be back more often, I swear!
To take you out....
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