I came home from the Temple this morning and saw a lot of activity across the street.  "Big deal" you may think.  Well, it really is.  The beautiful home across the street has been vacant for about 5 years.  What happened 5 years ago? The economy and some difficult business issues for the family who lived there. And, as we all have seen across the country, the family just walked away from their beautiful home.  We have seen glimmers of hope over the years.  Folks who say they have purchased the home, but the banks just couldn't find a solution to make everyone happy and thus it was dark again.  

However, I saw moving trucks today with real people moving real furniture into the home!  I thought about what I could take to them as a house-warming gift.  I decided to make one of my favorites.....Pumpkin bread with Chocolate Chips.  It's as good as it sounds....trust me.

I decided to use my Canned Pumpkin that I did a few weeks ago.  

So, I put some of the chunks into my little blender.

One Quart of pumpkin chunks gave me just under 2 cups of pumpkin puree.  Just for your information, a 15 oz can of pumpkin puree yields about 1.75 cups of puree.

This fabulous recipe recommends adding the pumpkin puree and eggs....

Vegetable Oil....

and the Sugar.  Mix well.

In a second bowl, I added the flour baking soda and salt (isn't this little measuring spoon great?  I got it at the recent Build Your Own Blog Conference held in SLC a couple of weeks ago).  I also added the spices as well.

Mix all the dry ingredients together.  Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients.  

Even though this step takes a few minutes, it is totally worth it.  I trace the bottom of the bread pan on to parchment paper.  I cut them out and place them in the bottom of the bread pan (after I have sprayed the pan with cooking spray).  This allows me to easily remove the bread from the pan without it tearing.

This recipe made 6 mini loaves of delicious Pumpkin Bread.

This recipe does not call for Chocolate chips.....but my Ghirardelli chips were screaming for me to throw them in!

After baking, I let the loaves cool.

I took a loaf over to meet the new neighbors.  Then we came home and ate some ourselves....delicious!

The recipe comes from here.

Just another benefit from canning pumpkin.  I would encourage you to put 'canning pumpkin' on your list next fall.  It is totally worth it!