A new favourite loaf

An unexpected visit from my parents on Halloween yielded delicious results! They appeared at our door bearing a very seasonally appropriate gift--a pumpkin! And what a pumpkin it was! Huge! I let it sit on my kitchen counter for a day so I could bask in its glory for awhile, knowing full well I wouldn't see another like it for a whole year. Then yesterday, I finally worked up the mettle to break it down into pieces. I peeled and chopped it up for freezing, as it is a baking and cooking staple. Normally you should cook the pieces before freezing, but I couldn't be bothered (it was quite enough to chop it up!). I reserved a few pieces to make a new recipe, Pumpkin Loaf. I don't want to call it a bread, because that implies yeast and this is a quickbread. However, it acts very much like a bread and can be used as such. Let me say, delicious! I used a mixture of white and whole wheat flour to give it more of a nutitional punch and lessen my guilt for indulging. It has quickly become my favourite loaf! So moist and delicious, I could eat it for breakfast, lunch and snack! Bonus: pumpkin is good for you! So ha!

Here is a bento lunch I made for my husband yesterday. On the left you can see some salted salmon which I pan fried. The upper right is just some sliced cucumbers and below it is a tamago-yaki (rolled sweet omelet). Rice is of course standard. We made the salted salmon ourselves. It is super easy! We bought a huge piece of salmon from Costco and sprinkled both sides of the fillet with pickling salt (any salt would work just as well). We then let it sit in the fridge for an hour. Then we sliced it into individual servings and froze it for quick lunches. Salted salmon is also nice broken into flakes and mixed with steamed rice.

This is actually one of my husband's favourite dishes: ginger pork. Though it is not swimming in sauce, the flavour is very much there. The meat is sauted until the sauce soaks in and evaporates away. The result is tender, ginger infused pork with a hint of something sweet and salty. I served it on a bed of cabbage steamed with butter, vinegar, sugar, salt and pepper.

Definately making pumpkin loaf again!