I am sure all the "butter chews" I snarfed over vacay have nothing to do with it, but is it just me or does my ass seem larger this morning?

After returning from the fat farm known as my in laws house, my pants are fitting a bit tighter and there's a little too much junk in my trunk. Last year I lost 20 pounds, and this year I want to lose another 25, and now I'm starting in the hole. Which sucks, but I am going to use it as motivation to get off my ass and finish this thing already. So I need to start back counting points, which sucks, but works, and excercising, which also sucks, but works. There's so many little things you have to learn the hard way when you are in the middle of trying to change your lifestyle. One of them is that you always do better when you plan ahead. So this Sunday I thought I would try to make the pumpkin bread from the most recent Cooking Light so that I would have breakfasts ready made for this week, and I really thought it was going to be awful, since I am not good at breads, etc, but it was YUM! And it's a great way to use up any extra cans of pumpkin pie gook you might have lying around from when your mom brought a grocery store's worth of crap to your house for Thanksgiving because of course they don't have stores that sell canned pumpkin in the wilds of Nebraska! Sigh.


I cut this in half, beccause I didn't want to make all that much bread, and I substituted Splenda for half the sugar, so I'm calling it two points a slice.

Chocolate Chip Pumpkin Bread

2 cups sugar
2 cups canned pumpkin
1/2 cup canola oil
1/2 cup fat-free vanilla pudding
4 large egg whites
3 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 1/4 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 cup semisweet chocolate chips
Cooking spray
Preheat oven to 350°.

Combine first 5 ingredients in a large bowl, stirring well with a whisk. Lightly spoon flour into dry measuring cups; level with a knife. Combine flour, cinnamon, salt, and baking soda in a medium bowl, stirring well with a whisk. Add flour mixture to pumpkin mixture, stirring just until moist. Stir in chocolate chips.
Spoon batter into 2 (8 x 4-inch) loaf pans coated with cooking spray. Bake at 350° for 1 hour and 15 minutes or until a wooden pick inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool 10 minutes in pans on a wire rack, and remove from pans. Cool completely on wire rack.
Yield: 32 servings (serving size: 1 slice)
CALORIES 152 (30% from fat); FAT 5g (satfat 1.2g, monofat 2.5g, polyfat 1.1g); PROTEIN 2g; CARBOHYDRATE 26.5g; FIBER 1.1g; CHOLESTEROL 0.0mg; IRON 1mg; SODIUM 137mg; CALCIUM 10mg;