A little comfort food to start off your day

I'm sitting here eating warm pumpkin bread with cream cheese. Go ahead, hate me...
Today was a "must clean out the fridge" day. After defrosting the freezer earlier in the week, we discovered lots of things that needed using up. Plus, I had leftover ingredients from several of our earlier meals: roasted pumpkin, a half container of plain yogurt, etc.

This was loosely based on a recipe I pulled off the internet, but I've made so many changes it's almost original. Feel free to experiment with the special flour (oatmeal, quinoa, etc) and add nuts and dried fruit (or chocolate chips) if you have them in the pantry and like that sort of thing. Though, FYI, nuts should ALWAYS be toasted. The flavor difference is out of this world wonderful.

Pumpkin Bread

Whir in a spice mill or clean coffee grinder:
1 T flax seeds
1 t whole cloves

Clean out grinder (so the clove oil doesn't eat the plastic), dump contents into a large bowl and mix together with:

1/2 cup buckwheat (or other flour)
1 1/4 cup regular flour
1/2 cup white sugar
1/2 cup dark brown sugar
1 t baking soda
1/2-3/4 t salt (depends on your preference)
1/2 t EACH: cinnamon, nutmeg and ginger

In a separate bowl, lightly combine:
2 eggs
1/4 cup plain yogurt
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1/2 cup water
and pumpkin. I used about 1/4 of a large one, cooked and roasted, but a full can of unseasoned pumpkin should also do the trick. I estimate 1 1/2-2 cups pumpkin.

Add wet ingredients to dry, stir until just combined, and pour into greased and floured pans and bake at, oh, 350 until a toothpick comes out clean. Let cool, then transfer to racks. Freeze if necessary, eat to your heart's content.

***
My maid isn't coming today, so I took advantage of the bread baking to do a nice, superficial clean of the kitchen. In between blog posts, scene writing and Demand Studios articles, I plan on dusting, sweeping and hanging wet laundry. Oh, and I have to lug my bags and cart to the grocery store, as we're long overdue for basics. The new supermarket down the street has terrible pricing, so I'll have to go to the cheaper one that's farther away.* I've decided that mopping the floors is out, and of course, hubby will have to wait till next week to have ironed shirts. Ju, our phenomenal maid, is shirt-presser extraordinaire. When I pick up the iron, the shirts end up looking worse than when they came off the drying rack, so I just leave it all up to her capable hands!

Upstairs, I hear practicing going on, little soft plunkings on the piano. It's so relaxing...it makes me want to curl up, not get moving!

* Farther away and harder to get to. The sidewalks in this neighborhood are basically non-existent. They serve as: parking lots, tree displays, and stair climbers. Seriously, in order to take my cart to and from the store, I have to walk down the center of the street, as it is impossible to walk on the uneven sidewalks, with trees planted in the center, giving so little room to walk on either side that my wheels scrape the walls. I don't like grocery shopping quite as much now, obviously.