By Thanksgiving in ten days and I have my assignments and a plan. This week was the practice run for the sweet potato situation — brown sugar, orange zest, pecans, a little butter on top — and it worked on the first try, which surprised me because I had invented it based on three different recipes I read and no actual testing. Ryan ate a full test portion and said it was the best sweet potato thing he had ever had, which is useful data and also biased from the source. I will take it.
I have also been stockpiling Thanksgiving supplies in a very calculated Aldi way: the butter went on sale last week, the cream cheese for the dessert was already in the freezer, the pecans I bought in November because that is the only month they are reasonably priced. My total Thanksgiving contribution should run about forty-five dollars for a table of twelve, which is the kind of math I do automatically now and enjoy doing. Special ed teachers learn to work within constraints. That applies to grocery budgets too.
My students have been in a pre-holiday restless energy all week, which is a universally recognized phenomenon: the week before any holiday break, kids start to feel it before it happens. You redirect, you hold the structure, you give them something to look forward to while keeping the routine intact. I made paper turkeys with my in-person kids on Friday, which is not strictly in the curriculum but sometimes you make paper turkeys and everybody feels better about things.
The blog this week is a full Thanksgiving on a budget post — all my assigned dishes with costs, shopping strategy, where to find the deals. It went up Wednesday and by Friday it was the most-viewed post I have ever written, including the rotisserie chicken breakdown in April. Apparently Thanksgiving on a budget is the thing people needed this year. I understand. This year has needed a lot of careful counting.
The sweet potato dish was the star of my practice-run week, but once Ryan gave his verdict and I closed my notebook, I wanted something that felt like a reward —something warm and a little indulgent that did not require any more planning or math. Pumpkin chocolate chip cookies are exactly that: they come together fast, they smell like the whole season, and my students would have made paper turkeys and eaten ten of these without blinking. After a week of holding the structure while everyone around me felt the holiday coming, I needed a little of that feeling too.
Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies
Prep Time: 15 min | Cook Time: 12 min | Total Time: 27 min | Servings: 36 cookies
Ingredients
- 1 cup canned pumpkin puree
- 1 cup granulated sugar
- 1/2 cup vegetable oil
- 1 large egg
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 2 cups all-purpose flour
- 2 teaspoons baking powder
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
- 1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
- 1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
Instructions
- Preheat oven. Heat oven to 375°F. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper or lightly grease them.
- Mix wet ingredients. In a large bowl, whisk together the pumpkin puree, sugar, vegetable oil, egg, and vanilla extract until smooth and well combined.
- Combine dry ingredients. In a separate bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, and salt.
- Bring together. Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and stir until just combined —do not overmix. Fold in the chocolate chips.
- Scoop and bake. Drop rounded tablespoons of dough onto the prepared baking sheets, spacing about 2 inches apart. Bake for 10–12 minutes, until the tops are set and the edges are just lightly golden.
- Cool. Let cookies rest on the baking sheet for 5 minutes before transferring to a wire rack. They will firm up as they cool.
Nutrition (per serving)
Calories: 98 | Protein: 1g | Fat: 4g | Carbs: 15g | Fiber: 1g | Sodium: 72mg