I made a second batch of pumpkin bread this morning. Second batch in a week, I should specify. The first batch went wrong somehow and resulted in a very stodgy, goopy mess that I threw away after exchanging multiple Paul Hollywood quips with my husband.
Today’s batch is better. I mean, it’s not going to win any beauty pageants. (Why doesn’t it ever RISE?) And it was still slightly stodgy, which I don’t understand. (Okay, I didn’t leave it in for the full 65 to 75 minutes the recipe suggests, but when I checked at sixty minutes, the toothpicks came out clean! That should mean DONE and NO STODGE!)
Stodginess aside, it tastes wonderful. Bonus, my house smells wonderfully of cinnamon and cloves and pumpkin.
Speaking of pumpkin… It’s making its way into the menu again this week. You should be aware that I don’t really like pumpkin. Pumpkin bread – okay, and maybe a smattering of other pumpkin desserts – is the lone exception. But my husband suggested it, and then he suggested another pumpkin recipe when I wasn’t properly enthusiastic about the first one, and a) I try to accept his dinner suggestions because I want to encourage him to help me with the Sisyphean task of coming up with meals to eat day in, day out, every day, day after day, until death, and b) he clearly is in a pumpkin frame of mind, so why not feed that craving?
My range of expressions as I go through the Pumpkin Stages of Acceptance. P.S. I look nothing at all like Kristen Wiig.
This week is supposed to be damp and cooler if not cool, so I am going all out with the hearty meals.
Dinners for the Week of September 23-30
- Coconut Curry Chickpeas with Pumpkin and Lime: I am really, really not in the mood for this, but perhaps low expectations will mean I enjoy it more than anticipated?
- Chicken Shawarma with Steamed Broccoli: We haven’t had this old favorite in awhile; it will be good this week.
- Beef with Sugar Snap Peas: I’m just in the mood for this?? Feels like it bridges the gap between “fresh and summery” and “nourishing and warm” pretty well. I might throw in a red bell pepper if I’m feeling fancy.
- Chicken Paprikas: Yum. The ultimate cool-weather comfort food.
- Apple Cider Glazed Pork Chops with Green Beans: This is a recipe that I used to make ALL the time… and yet I can find no record of it on my blog! Has it really been THAT long since I’ve made it? Well. Time to fix that.
- Ground Beef Tacos: My daughter is having a friend sleep over this weekend; the last time she slept over, she was deeply disappointed that we didn’t have tacos for dinner, which was what I’d served the previous time she’d been over. This time, I will make tacos once again. It’s really a gift for all of us.
What’s on your menu plan for this week?
I am picky about pumpkin and especially overly spiced pumpkin. I like pie, bread and scones but hate it in drinks. I would love the shawarma. I’m undecided about dinners since I’m only one person. Sometimes I just have peanut butter toast and cottage cheese. 🙂
The shawarma is so good, Margaret!
Ha – it IS a gift for all to know exactly what to serve company. Most kids (and adults) don’t want originality, they want comfort!
Right?! Knowing she likes tacos makes it very easy to please her. (You should have seen her face fall last time when I announced we had chicken nuggets for dinner. I asked her what she liked and she said “tacos” or “steak.” LOL.)
Well you may not be excited for the pumpkin and chickpea curry but I’m all about it!
You know I’m a big fan of the beef and snow pea stir fry! As well as tacos. You’ve got a solid dinner plan for this week!
Yesssssss I am super into the stir fry this week. I hope you try the curry – I’ve made it before and it is… interesting. My husband LOVES it though. And I enjoyed it much more than I anticipated. It was less pumpkin-y that I expected. Not UN-pumpkin-y, but less. Not sure if this is making it more or less appealing to you.
That curry recipe says “do not use lite coconut milk” and I feel like it’s a dare. How are you going to stop me, curry recipe? I am a rebel!
Right?! I bought lite and regular coconut milk because I am both a rule follower and a recipe adjuster. We’ll see which half of my personality wins out.
Those pork chop sound amazing and perfect for fall! I am an apple-flavor-fan living in a house of pumpkin fans, so my plan this week is to make pumpkin muffins so I can save my apple desserts for when it gets cooler and I may appreciate them more, haha!
I am also an apple fan, Lindsay! Apples forever!
Is your baking powder or baking soda old? Could that be why your pumpkin bread isn’t rising? I love pumpkin bread, but am unlikely to make any because I will eat the entire loaf, or it will rot. My daughter will exclaim that she LOVES pumpkin bread, but won’t eat any, and my husband can’t have sugar anymore and it will make him sad. I guess I could make a loaf if I really want it, and give the rest to neighbors. That’s what they’re there for, right?
Your plan sounds excellent. I don’t have a plan this week except to try not to let too much food go bad. We have some cooked chicken breasts in the fridge that I want to be eaten TODAY. I have an entire chicken that my husband bought and now I have to deal with, so I guess we’re having roast chicken tomorrow. Beyond that, I’m not sure. I’m hit or miss with pumpkin. I like butternut squash though. Can you replace the pumpkin with that? (I know, you already have the pumpkin…but maybe next time?)
Make pumpkin bread in those little tiny bread loaves so make three or four loaves and then you can eat one and give the rest away! Or make muffins! It doesn’t have to be a giant loaf!
YES.
Good thinking!
The only way I can stand butternut squash is pureed as a soup. I know; my pickiness is ridiculous.
This particular pumpkin bread freezes really well, just FYI. AND I did make it into muffins last week. They were not stodgy at all, although they were also flat. Maybe it is my baking soda/powder? I will have to experiment. Anyway: I think you should make the bread, cut it into slices, freeze the slices, and then heat up one slice at a time for the next few months. The top gets nice and crunchy in the oven. YUM.
UM…she has a muffin recipe that is the same except has a pecan streusel topping??? I’m totally making that, and freezing/giving some away. YUM. Thank you!
Woot woot!
Apple cider pork chops? Ooh… I might need that recipe!
They are so good!
Hahaha the pumpkin stages of acceptance. I was going to say “I like pumpkin just fine” but the fact is I don’t really cook with it much. Other than, you know, pumpkin bread. And I use it in my carrot cake recipe. I don’t really make anything else? I was thinking of making a pumpkin pasta that Birchy posted a while back.
I made the shawarma when my parents were here! I find it so easy to double and make a lot for a crowd.
Noah used to love to bake with pumpkin and make pumpkin sauces for pasta, but I can’t remember the last time he did.
My dinner challenge this week has been ordering the meals because they all have ingredients I want to use up as quickly as possible (feta from last week, cucumbers on a dying vine in the garden, mung bean sprouts– new, but they just never last as long as the package says they will– and farmers’ market tomatoes that are too good to refrigerate). What will last the longest? (I already used the feta in a frittata last night.)
This sounds like a fun and slightly stressful challenge! Tell me how you end up using everything!
Mmm. That curry recipe actually sounds pretty good! I already made a curry soup this weekend so I probably can’t get away with another curry dish this week- maybe you can report back after you make it.
The inside of your pumpkin bread looks good! It looks like it was cooked through properly. I’m sure it tastes delicious.
It does taste delicious! I think the leavening agent was just faulty!
Hey, we are having shawarma tomorrow.
Ryan is doing his science fair project on how much baking powder makes muffins rise so I will have him get back to you on how that goes and you can see if his experiment can be replicated by another scientist with pumpkin bread.
One of Ryan’s friends is intensely disappointed if he comes over and I don’t make grilled cheese. Just plain grilled cheese with white bread (which I only buy for company, my poor children) and wrapped in plastic American cheese. Also, his mother says he refuses to eat grilled cheese anywhere else. So yes, tacos for every playdate.
This is an excellent science fair project! I very much want to know the results.
I suspect that more baking powder will make taller muffins but we will let science tell us. I’m also thinking that the muffins without any baking powder will be very, very flat.
This also reminds me of when Elizabeth did her science fair on the speeds at which different kinds of chocolate melts and she guessed that dark chocolate would melt the fastest and I said “are you SURE about that” before I let her write it down. Breaking science we do in this house. We also did what dissolves faster- things in hot/cold water, big particles/little particles, and stirring/not stirring. All BIG SURPRISES, NEVER WOULD HAVE GUESSED.
I love all of this.
I’ve been adding squash and pumpkin liberally to stews and even pasta sauce–it gives everything a most luscious goopiness. (And perhaps that’s the problem with it in bread?)
Luscious goopiness is the exact thing it does!
Didn’t I say last year that I was finally going to make chicken paprikas after reading your post? Well, I never got around to it.
🤣
But thanks to this post, I’m making it this week! It’s so simple, and it looks absolutely delicious. Thank you for the reminder!
It is bubbling away on my stove right now, Kari! I hope you end up making it and that it is as delicious and comforting for you as it is for me!
Your menu plans looks tasty as usual. No real planned meals this week, just kind of living in the moment, will make whatever moves me around dinnertime.
This sounds so wild and free 😉
Your pumpkin bread looks good to me! Can I ask a couple of obvious questions as a fellow baker? (1) were your ingredients all at room temp? (2) not to be obvious, but did you mix wet and dry separately then combine? (3) is your baking powder/soda old? I only ask these because I have made all of these mistakes and had flatter bread (that tasted good but did not look as great), so maybe one of them is your issue?
Also, have you ever tried using AI for your dinner plans sometime. For example, I typed: “what to make for dinner when you have cheese, chicken, cornflakes, peas and rice. It has to be palatable for a 10 year old as well as adults and should take less than 30 minutes to make.” It gave me a nice recipe for a chicken and rice bake. However, you could also say that you want to stretch it over a few days and not eat the same thing over and over etc. or say that it is for a kids party or it has to be vegan and it comes up with some pretty creative things!
I just realized that I read your post while I was feeding a baby a bottle – too hard to comment. I’m shocked that your pumpkin bread is turning out less than perfect. I love my recipe and I double it always – so I’m averaging about 6 loaves a week right now. My people love it and devour it.
Dinners this week, Hmm. Coach grilled twice, which has been a great help. I’m juggling a lot at the moment, making food for another tailgate. Plus I’ve been running some food over to my folks every few days, and checking in on them. Three girls playing volleyball on 3 different teams (the little girls are JV and V at their school) has me running in circles. I think it’ll be leftovers tonight. Again. I’m still not quite sure how much food to make with kids back at college. Three mouths less than our summer months is throwing me for a loop.
We have turkeyball kale soup and red lentil pasta (surprisingly good!) on the menu this week.
I want to like pumpkin bread, but I think I am going for zucchini.
You’ve really improved.
I don’t really love pumpkin either – pumpkin bread and pumpkin scones or muffins yes, where the ratio is like 1/2 c of pumpkin to way more everything else, but not intense pumpkin. I’m always intrigued by pumpkin pasta, but I think I tried it once and it was terrible.
When my daughter’s BFF came here every Monday so I could take them both to Glee Club after, I learned quickly that only chicken curry was acceptable as a dinner. You’re doing the right thing.
I am late and the week is gone by but chick pea curries are always a good choice in my book. Yum.