Bread

Last year I decided not to eat any desserts, treats, or sweets from December 1 until Christmas. Why? I have no idea. I think I really wanted to test my willpower, and no other time of year is so treat-infested. I was in the midst of a difficult semester…so maybe I wanted to prove that I could actually accomplish what I wanted to.

I convinced Jarom to do it with me, and that’s probably the only thing that kept me from giving in. His classmates at the law school told me how good he was about turning down cookies, even when they promised not to tell me he cheated.

We started again on Sunday, since a few extra days isn’t going to kill us. (More likely it’s good for us.) We got back to Utah on Saturday night with very little food in the house. Jarom had bought a pineapple that we planned to eat on Friday, with our knockoff Dave’s burgers, but I guess we forgot about it until we were packing to come home. Pineapple + Orange County oranges + grapes + Allred orchard apples = amazing smoothie, right?

Disgusting. The pineapple wasn’t even close to ripe, so the whole thing was bland; the texture was awful. But it seemed a shame to waste all that nutritious fruit. We both suffered through a giant glass of this horrible smoothie and after that were so full that we didn’t want any dessert.

Today, I talked myself into making pumpkin bread. I debated its classification as a sweet: 2 loaves have 3 cups of sugar, so it ought to be discounted. After all, I ruled out hot chocolate, biscotti, pudding, and several other things we had in the house. In the end I went ahead with the pumpkin bread because I wanted to make something with the kids, but most of the things I could think of (brownies, cookies, cake, caramels) were clearly against the rules. And it turns out the bread isn’t that sweet or even flavorful.

Well, after the first piece it tasted a lot better. But I still could use a new pumpkin bread recipe. You know, for after Christmas.