Can it REALLY be Thanksgiving week already???  I always feel like life is on fast-foward from Labor Day until Christmas.  With the holidays quickly approaching, I will be adding some of my favorite holiday recipes on the blog.  Not that they are “holiday” dishes necessarily, but I always seem to get requests to make them or the opportunity to make them around this time of year.

This past weekend we had a get together with some of our closest friends and it was my job to make the dessert.  As I was flipping through my recipe box looking for blueberry cobbler, I stumbled across a recipe for pumpkin bread that I have never used.  To be honest, pumpkin flavored anything had always repelled me since I know what the inside of a pumpkin smells like plus we’ve already talked about how picky I am :).  But then I thought about how great all of the pumpkin spice scented things smell…so I decided to finally give it a try.  The recipe seemed pretty straight forward, so I grabbed a few cans of pumpkin from the grocery store and got to work.

I have to say, I was pretty skeptical when I first started mixing everything together.  Me being…well me…I made a huge mess and got pumpkin everywhere…under my cabinets, on the floor, on the dogs, in my hair, on my forehead…you get the idea.  The pumpkin smelled just like I remember so I was pretty grossed out, but I kept on mixing.  By the end of it with all the sugar and spices mixed in I didn’t feel so worried.  I threw it in to bake and an hour later it was finished.  By this time, my house smelled pretty heavenly and I was feeling better about the recipe.

Now we just had to wait for it to cool.  We had friends over to play games by this point and I’m pretty sure we all were just pretending to pay attention while really just watching the timer.  Once the bread was cool enough to pop out of the loaf pan, we descended like a pack of vultures.  It turned out great!  It’s a good thing that the recipe makes 2 loaves because we ate 1 whole loaf in a matter of an hour.  So without further ado, here it is!  May your Thanksgiving be full of family and warmth :).