Monastery of Angels' Pumpkin Bread

I always have to read a little before I go to bed. I get all ready - brush my teeth, wash my face, put on my cashmere bed socks (the best birthday present a girlfriend ever gave me) - and then I get in bed, adjust my pillow, fluff the blanket and open a book. If I don't read before turning off the lights, I'm guaranteed to toss and turn for a long while before falling asleep, if I'm able to do that at all.

For the past few nights, I've been re-reading Farmer Boy. I can't tell you how many times I've read it, but we can all be sure it's a fairly high number. The Little House series was my reason for living when I was a child (until Narnia came long and then Anne of Green Gables and Diana Wynne Jones and, oh, let's stop this right now, otherwise we'll be here all day) and when I was at my friend Joan's last year, gripped with writer's block and worry, she pulled Farmer Boy off her shelf and handed it over to me. "Remember this?"

The pleasure I get from going back into Almanzo's world is hard to put into words. Every other sentence plunges me back in time to when I was first reading about how the Wilder men cut and stored ice, packed in straw, until summertime, how Almanzo and his siblings made candy while their parents were out of town, using up all the good sugar their mother warned them not to finish, how Almanzo longed to be given the responsibilities of caring for the family's horses while his father continued to command him to stay away. And, of course, how little, 9-year old Almanzo put away in one regular weeknight dinner what most of us could barely manage on a holiday like Thanksgiving.

None of us (well, as far as I can imagine) are doing anywhere near the amount of physical labor that he was at nine years old. But still. Here's what Almanzo ate on one winter's evening:

1. Sweet, mellow baked beans
2. Mealy boiled potatoes, with brown ham-gravy
3. Ham
4. Velvety bread spread with sleek butter
5. A tall heap of pale mashed turnips
6. A hill of stewed yellow pumpkin
7. Plum preserves, strawberry jam and grape jelly
8. Spiced watermelon pickles
9. A large piece of pumpkin pie

And then (oh, you didn't think he was done, did you?), the family retired to the fireplace and Almanzo ate popcorn and apples and drank apple cider, and he took such pleasure in this and his family and his life that when I read that bit I always fairly burst with the longing to reach out through time and space and dimension to touch his sweet little self or give him a hug. And also eat a handful of popcorn with a glass of cider in the other hand.

Books, man. They kill me.

We think Thanksgiving is such a busy time and we overwhelm ourselves with grocery lists and cooking strategies and forums on whether to brine or not to brine (actually, this lady doesn't), so reading about how the women in Almanzo's family did that kind of work every day, in addition to churning the butter and curing the ham and dying their own wool and cloth so they could sew their clothes and their own rag carpets, among a hundred other daily chores and duties, well, it's humbling.

The resourcefulness and thrift and sheer doggedness is particularly inspiring, as well as mortifying, of course, because I think nothing of throwing out a stale heel of bread or letting those two stray carrots in the fridge whither into sponginess. While I'm far away from ever wanting to move to a house in upstate New York and become a self-subsistent farmer, what I'm trying to say, I guess, is that Farmer Boy is as enchanting to the adult me now as it was to the little me then.

I made pumpkin pie for our Thanksgiving feast (we celebrated on Saturday instead of Thursday), but due to a little, er, mathematical error, I roasted about six times too much squash in preparation for the pie (this one, in case you're wondering, which was once again demolished in one fell swoop, but with this crust recipe, the second half of which I used for this tart, which was eaten even faster than the pumpkin pie).

I froze some of the squash, but with all the Advent tea times ahead of us in the next month (the Germans are big on Advent Sunday tea time), I decided to get resourceful and bake something to have on hand during the next few weekends. Pumpkin bread from a monastery in Los Angeles that sells loaves for $9 a pop seemed like a good place to start.

The recipe hasn't changed since the early 1970's, which is a pretty good pedigree, if you ask me. It's a basic sweet bread or tea cake or whatever you'd like to call it, spiced with cinnamon and nutmeg (I also added some cloves) and is quiveringly tender and moist. If you, like me, use Hokkaido (or red kuri) squash, your batter will seem practically fluorescent.

I promise, though, that it will mellow in the oven, turning an agreeable, gingerbread-y brown. The crumb is velvety-soft and fragrant with sweet squash and the spices, while the crust gets all caramelized and toothsome. Some bits of it even crunch. It's a lovely thing to eat. I wanted to add walnuts to the batter, but mine were all rancid, so I threw in chopped pecans, the last of a precious stash from the States, instead. Their earthy crunch is a nice thing to happen upon as you work your way through each soft slice of bread.

My only advice would be to try and make as many loaves out of this one batch of batter as you can. I crammed all of the batter into one 13-inch long loaf pan and ended up having to bake the loaf for an hour and a half, nearly burning the edges. If you bake it in smaller loaf pans, the baking time reduces to one hour.

I let it cool completely, then I wrapped it carefully in plastic wrap and foil and put in the freezer where it'll rest until this Sunday when we have friends over for tea in the candlelight.

But next Sunday, I've already decided, there will be popcorn and apples and cider. And in addition to being grateful for my family's good health and my good fortune in life, I'll be saying a little gratitude prayer for books, my constant companions in this life.

Tell me, readers, what were the childhood books that you loved the most?

Monastery of Angels' Pumpkin Bread
Makes 1 13-inch long loaf or 2 smaller loaves
Original recipe here

3.5 cups of all-purpose flour
3 cups sugar
2 teaspoons baking soda
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
1.5 teaspoons salt
4 large eggs
1 cup vegetable oil
2/3 cup water
2 cups puréed pumpkin or squash
1/2 cup chopped pecans tossed with a spoonful or two of flour

1. Heat the oven to 350 degrees F. Butter and flour loaf pan(s). Sift together flour, sugar, baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg and salt in a large bowl.

2. In a separate bowl, combine eggs, oil, water and pumpkin and mix well. Mix the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients until the batter is smooth and there are no streaks of flour left. Fold in the pecans.

3. Scrape the batter into the buttered and floured loaf pan(s). Bake for 1.5 hours or until a cake tester inserted into the center of the bread comes out clean. Cool the pan(s) on a rack for half an hour before turning the loaves out to cool completely. Wrapped tightly, the bread keeps for at least three days.

Comments

[Kristine in Santa Barbara]

I agree with Heather above about the food porn in Farmer Boy. I read those books over and over and over as a child. And then read them to my daughters, now grown, several times. Last year I read my childhood copies one last time as they were cheap paperbacks (the boxed set!) and they just weren't made to last 40 years. It's hard to accept that the 70s were 40 years ago, btw.

Farmer Boy is so different than the rest of the series. It's not about hardship and sacrifice and uncertainty like the other LH books. It's about opportunity, security, food and even leisure. LIW gets to project her idea of her husband's abundant childhood onto the page and it's so wonderfully full.

Definitely keep reading the series in the years to come. You'll see something totally different after you have kids and have been married awhile. There is a whole 'nother adult layer there having to do with marriage and women's roles and money and land. Good stuff.

Thanks for the recipe too. I love the idea of a pumpkin tea bread.

[june2]

I lived for those books too - I'd forgotten all about Almanzo!

This is the kind of tea bread that is delicious toasted and spread with sweet cream (unsalted) butter. Or salted, either way!

[Daniel]

One of my favorite books is (still) The Last Guru by Daniel Pinkwater. I never thought about why I really loved it until recently when I was reminded of the pickleburgers. Basically, this Scotsman had invented Croco-cola with little bumps on the bottle. As penance for giving everyone cavities, he started a chain of fast food restaurants called McTavish's that served healthy fare like pickle burgers and celery shakes and was promoted by a Zen "clown" called Hodie MacBodhi. Well, that's just one page of the novel, and really only marginal, but it's one of the things that is still so vividly imprinted on my mind.

Oddly enough, pumpkin bread also takes me back to the same period of time, fourth grade, when we made it in class, and also the very first time I ever had it.

You know, we also read before bed, but mostly because I saw a British study that said your brain is still active if you go to bed immediately after staring at a screen without "resting your eyes" by reading.

[Sylee]

You won't beleive it but my copy of "Little House in the Big Woods" arrived in my mailbox on Monday: there must be an Ingalls Wilder craving floating in the ether!

[Joanna]

I LOVE Farmer Boy and all the other books in that series (indeed, all the books you mentioned in this post). My favorite, though, is Little House in the Big Woods. I remember reading the description of slating the butchered hog and storing all their food--onions, potatoes, cheeses...I took blocks and small stuffed animals, wrapped them in plain butcher paper, tied them with string, and put them on our top bunk. My own little Ingalls' style pantry of preserved foods.

Thanks for bringing that memory back! Time to read those books again.

[jenny]

Oh, Luisa. This entry almost made me cry. "Farmer Boy" was, without a doubt, one of my single favorite books during childhood. I liked it so much more than all the other Little House books, although I loved those, too. But I still have my childhood copy of FB, tattered from close to a hundred readings--no, seriously--and this fall, after a major disappointment, it was the only thing that seemed capable of pulling me away from despair. Those descriptions of food are like old friends, and were always my favorite part of the book, too!

I also loved "Anne" as a kid, along with "A Wrinkle in Time," "From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler," "The Giver," and (continuing with the pioneer-ish theme), "Caddie Woodlawn."

The one title you must read that is more recent--an absolute beauty, and so exquisitely true in every word--is "All Alone in the Universe" by Lynne Rae Perkins. Get it for yourself for Christmas. You'll devour it in an afternoon. And once you have, you'll know why the thought of a bowl of blueberries gives me chills in the same way the descriptions of food in "Farmer Boy" do.

[cristina]

ahhh, books! they were how i survived my extreme social awkwardness growing up. i loved fantasy books like 'wrinkle in time' and the narnia chronicles and actually spent a fair amount of time with tolkien (though I didn't quite get everything out of them at age 9!) but the book that i read over and over and over and over again and still have somewhere all tattered and torn is "Little Women". i always fancied myself like Jo. sigh, i think i need to dig it out now!

[Tim]

I never read those books about the Wilders, I may though now that I read The Dirty Life.http://www.amazon.com/Dirty-Life-Farming-Food-Love/dp/1416551603 I was so enthralled that I could't put it down. Now I have to go read about how they did it way back when. My wife has probably read all of them and I may even find them on my book shelves at home. Love the pumpkin stuff!

[Jess]

I was a Phantom Tollbooth girl. And I was mesmerized by Maira Kalman's picture books. (Do you know Ooh-la-la, Max in Love?) I used to read them with my grandmother.

Luisa, can you not find pecans in Berlin?

(Also, CASHMERE SOCKS! When Eli picked up a few pairs a couple of years ago, I teased him for buying something so extravagant, but since then, I think they've spent more time on my feet than his!)

[TheKitchenWitch]

I loved the Little House books, too. Later, it was Harriet the Spy who won my heart.

[meg]

Oh! And about the bread -- I am making ANOTHER loaf today (with pumpkin)! I shared my first batch with everyone, as it is perfectly spiced and moist and wonderful. Thank you so much!

[Nicole @cookingafterfive]

I adored the first Boxcar Children book. Of course, I read as many as they had in the series back then, but the original book I re-read over and over. I still have very vivid memories of curling up on the couch to read it straight through in one afternoon. (Divine looking bread, too. Can't wait to try it!)

[Robin]

!!!!!!! This is so in line with what I was thinking when I was rereading Farmer Boy just before Thanksgiving. When I was a child, I mostly noticed the food descriptions and how self-sufficient the children were. Now that I am an adult, I mostly notice how hard the adults were working ALL THE TIME. (To be fair, the kids worked, too.) During harvest time, mother would use any spare minute--as if there were spare minutes--to braid another inch of straw for the next summer's hats. At Christmas time, the children were surprised by gifts she had knitted them...when, exactly? Oh, I can't wait to reread the whole series when Bee is ready. I think we're about a year or two away.

VELVETY BREAD SPREAD WITH SLEEK BUTTER.

P.S. Advent Sunday tea time sounds wonderful.

P.P.S. I am also a Louisa May Alcott girl.

[lynh]

wow Luisa! Judging from the number of comments here, your book is going to be a huge hit and that makes me so, so happy. Your site is like homemade broth to me, nourishing and comforting and warming! My favorites were The Great Brain series by John D. Fitzgerald - a boy who is always outsmarted by his older brother, growing up in Utah before it was truly civilized - a lesser mark twain, but pleasurable nonetheless. And The babysitters club (guilty! yikes, so bad). Great post, lady. So happy to hear from you.

[mor]

With Farmer Boy, I remember pie at breakfast. At the age of 8 or so, that sounded like a fine idea.

But my best ever memory of childhood reading is the summer I had my mother to myself: my older sisters were at camp, my father was in Europe, and my younger brother was yet to be born. My mom bought me Wind in the Willows, and for a month or so she read a bit every day, with me lying in her lap. I was about 5 or 6, and my copy of the book has my first shaky inscription with some letters written backwards on the flyleaf.

Mole is my kind of domestic god, but there is plenty of good eating to be found throughout the book. Even hot buttered toast in jail with Toad!

All my Brit reading as a child did something to my head: my daughter still gets hysterical when she remembers my remark to my stepson: "I'm really interested in British cuts of meat!" Especially hilarious is the fact that he concurred.

I am really floored to find that others loved My Side of the Mountain. I absolutely loved that book but have never met anyone who has read it. Also pleased to meet others who loved the Joan Aiken series. I just discovered that she added to the series after I stopped with Nightbirds in Nantucket. I think a good Xmas read is in store.

[belle (tinkeringinthekitchen)]

what a delicious sounding (and looking!) recipe! Im going to grab a coffee and read more, so glad i found your blog :) Belle

[Emily]

Haha, I think I had virtually the same reading list as you growing up. My child-soul did a little leap of glee reading each of the titles in your list and remembering. The other favorites I would add are Caddie Woodlawn and the Dealing With Dragons books. Also, pumpkin bread is one of my favorite things and this one looks absolutely lovely!

[Julia]

Definitely another Wilder fan! As a child I also loved the Swallows and Amazons series, and also Frances Hodgson Burnett: The Little Princess and also The Secret Garden, both of which have fabulous secret-feast scenes--I can still remember the pet crow in The Secret Garden "gobbling" down an entire buttered crumpet "in one joyous gulp".

With a basement full of butternut squash this recipe looks very timely to me!! Thank you so much.

[Janet]

I loved the Little House books! Strangely never read Farmer Boy though. I distinctly remember that bit from The Long Winter where they put wheat in the coffee grinder to make bread.

I was also into the Redwall series and I remember being entranced by the descriptions of the food. Lots of fizzes and trifles. So many childhood books to remember fondly - anne of green gables, phantom tollbooth, anything by roald dahl, on and on!