Pumpkin Sourdough Bread

Now that the garden is done (phew! is anyone else completely exhausted for the entire month of September?) I've had more time to play around in the kitchen. We are blissfully overrun with pumpkins from our garden this year, so I was browsing the internet for a sourdough pumpkin sweet bread. I didn't have any luck (if you know of a good one, please let me know!) but it did get me thinking, and just for kicks I decided to try swapping out pumpkin for the potato in my potato sourdough bread recipe.

It worked beautifully - it's not anything like the pumpkin bread you see at bake sales; it's really more like a slightly orange sandwich loaf. You can barely taste the pumpkin. But it rises beautifully and tastes delicious (as you can see, more than half of it was gone before I got a chance to take a picture!)

I am going to continue trying to find a sourdough pumpkin sweet bread, but for now we're really enjoying this recipe (especially smothered with pumpkin spice honey butter. Mmmm . . .)

Pumpkin Spice Honey Butter

I came up with this recipe when I was attempting to make a sourdough pumpkin bread (I've been told that cinnamon doesn't react well with the sourdough starter, since it has slight antibacterial properties, and will mess up your wild yeasts. Not sure if that's true or not, but until I have time for more experimenting, I'll use this to top my toast). It is absolutely delicious (my kids were fighting over who got to lick the spoon I used to mix it up!) - perfect for any fall baked treat!

Pumpkin Spice Honey Butter
1/2 cup butter
1/3 cup honey
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp each ginger, nutmeg, and vanilla
1/8 tsp each cloves and salt
Mix all together well (it helps to soften the butter first) and it's ready!

Cheap and Simple Homemade Fruit Fly Trap

I'm not sure why, but we've had an infestation of fruit flies in the kitchen lately. One morning, I found four or five of them hovering around a banana peel, and remembered a trick someone had told me.

I wrapped an 8 1/2 by 11 sheet of paper in to a funnel shape, taped it securely to a canning jar with the offending banana peel in the bottom, and left it out on the counter. The next morning, this is what I found:

Apparently, the flies go down the funnel following the smell of the banana peel, but then try to get out by flying toward the light, getting trapped at the top of the jar (this is why you need to be careful to tape the funnel securely to the jar, leaving no gaps). Simple and effective!