Pumpkin Bread with Chocolate Chips and a Snowy Week of Grief

A brief recap of our week and its unexpected events …

Monday morning my mother in law and I awoke to find that Nick's grandmother had passed away in her sleep. After years of battling cancer we had the honor of having her live with us during her last days.

The rest of the week has been a difficult one of grieving, making arrangements, cleaning, working, and teaching the children. You know, grief amidst the reality that life continues on around us.

We also were blessed with a deep amount of snow. The roads being bad usually doesn’t deter us but Wednesday night we were out for youth group, ballet, and to go to Best Buy. It was super slippery and proceeded to get even slicker.

So Thursday morning Nick started out to take the kids to Classical Conversations and he turned around after 15 minutes. It was too slippery and cold to make the 45 minute drive to the schools church. It was a nice surprise to have our whole family together. The kids did school via zoom while I baked, cleaned, and cooked…all the while with the snow gently falling down on our sweet town. Love those kind of days!

Are you wondering what I baked? Well I’d love to share with you what I made!

First up I made a pineapple upside down cake. Nick’s grandma was famous for hers and so in her honor I decided to make one to go with dinner. I used this recipe from The Pioneer Woman. I love her recipes and this one is tried and true in our home! If you have never made a pineapple upside down cake, I recommend starting with this one! Also if you want, you can follow her instructions for the upside down (which becomes the top) of the pineapple-cherry jazz and just use a boxed cake mix. That is what I did because I had a boxed cake to get rid of.

In an effort to conserve energy I’ve been trying to make more than one thing in the oven when I have it already heating. So I made Pumpkin bread from my very favorite cookbook, Nutbread to Nostalgia, from our local Junior League back in the ‘80s.

Here is the recipe:

Pumpkin Bread with Chocolate Chips

Ingredients:

• 3 cups flour

• 2 cups sugar

• 2 tsp. baking soda

• 1/2 tsp. baking powder

• 1 tsp. each: ground cloves, cinnamon, nutmeg, salt

• 1 can pumpkin

• 3 eggs, slightly beaten

• 2/3 cup vegetable oil

• 1 cup chocolate chips (any kind, mini or regular)

Mix the first 8 ingredients together. Add pumpkin, oil, and eggs, and mix well. Stir 1/2 cup of chocolate chips into batter. Pour into 2 greased 9x5-inch loaf pans. Sprinkle remaining chocolate chips of top of loaves. Bake at 350 degrees for 60 minutes. Cool 10 minutes then remove from pans. Refrigerate or freeze for later use.

Makes 2 loaves

I love this recipe because it is quick and easy, leaves the house smelling amazing and can easily be used as a dessert item, afternoon snack, or as a quick breakfast. It’s moist (everyone’s favorite word) and so yummy. The chocolate chips may seem unexpected with the pumpkin but if you are leery just try it! I promise you’ll like it.

I’m posting this on a Saturday and I regret to inform you that the pumpkin bread didn’t make it long enough for me to take even one photo. I came home from teaching classes to an empty pan. It makes 2 loaves but the other we had given away as a thank you to a lovely neighbor who had cleared our walk. Nevertheless, I promise the bread is so , so good.

Our week has been shadowed by grief. And life. Love and loss. We are here to live it all, the shine brightly through it all, despite tragedy, sadness.

I hope you all had a wonderful week. I was going to start doing a weekly update each week but we are starting our Frugal February this series and I’ll be posting every day. So, I don’t know how I’ll handle all of that. We shall see if I post a weekly recap as well.

If you missed our Frugal February post you can read all about it and decide for yourself if you’d like to join us.

Loves!