Using What You Have: Pumpkin Bread And Energy Resources

This time of year, canned pumpkin seems to line my pantry shelves and people start bringing me zucchini from their gardens to use in my baking. For this reason, nearly everything I bake in the fall contains pumpkin or zucchini – there is something about the leaves changing that makes me long for the smell of warm spices. I even spike my coffee in the mornings with cinnamon and nutmeg. Luckily, a friend's husband who was recently in Qatar brought her back a bunch of wonderful cinnamon and she has been kind enough to share her cinnamon stash with me...

This all comes from the urge to use what we have. We have fields full of bright orange pumpkins and gardens full of large snake-like zucchini this time of year. While I have been known to bake my pies out of fresh sugar pumpkins, I always seem to have canned pumpkin on hand in the fall to use in my baking. One thing I really love about baking is that it allows me to creatively use what I have.