The movin' blues turned pumpkin orange

Every time I know I have something to do, I can't think about anything else until I have beat the challenge. This morning, I woke up with an urge to purge-my cabinets that is. Last week, our move-out date was moved up by two weeks. As the organizational and slight control freak that I tend to be, yesterday I started to think about everything that needed to be done. We get our moving truck in four weeks. FOUR. (My husband got a job in February, and we are relocating to Denver, CO on April 20). My brain was still functioning under the impression that I had six weeks, until this morning.

So, I looked in my cabinets to see what we still hadn't eaten during our revisit to our college years (you know, when you would eat a box of macaroni for dinner or pick out everything that you are craving at the time and put it in a pot-perhaps that was just me) while trying to eat all the food in the house. What I found, you ask? Pumpkin. Lots and lots of pumpkin.


I am a very seasonally driven person when it comes to recipes. I eat watermelon in the summer and only in the summer; I eat pumpkin in the fall and only in the fall; I LOVE hot chocolate (especially with peppermint schnapps) but only in the winter. So, finding over 60 oz. of pumpkin in my cabinet in March was kind of a bummer. But instead of dwelling on the fact that I feel I am betraying my love of all things pumpkin starting in late September, today I took on the challenge to get over my seasonal palette and dive into an all-time favorite-skinny pumpkin muffins (with the skinny completely negated by the can of cream cheese frosting I also found in my cabinet that will be smothered on the top of said muffins after I'm done.)

Skinny whole wheat pumpkin muffins:
(I adapted this recipe from a recipe I clipped from Parade-I know right?)

1 cup all-purpose flour

1 cup whole wheat flour

1/2 tsp. cinnamon

1 tsp. pumpkin pie spice

1 stick butter, softened (I had to use Crock's Country Spread)

1/2 cup light brown sugar

2 eggs

1 cup pumpkin puree (fresh or canned)

1/4 cup skim milk

Preheat oven to 400 degrees

Whisk flour, baking powder, spices and salt; set aside

Beat butter until creamy; beat in sugar. Add eggs one at a time, blending completely after each addition.

Fold in pumpkin and milk; add flour mixture and mix into batter.

Put batter in muffin pan and bake until muffins are puffed and a toothpick comes out clean from the center, about 20 minutes.

Serve warm or cooled and add butter or, like I did, cinnamon almond cream cheese frosting made from the aforementioned can of cream cheese frosting (cleaning out your cabinets sure has its perks!)