Ok. quick! I have to write this recipe to not forget!

This was not supposed to unfurl this way, but I lost the urgently scribbled scrap of paper that I wanted to immortalize and now the urge is even more desperate.

The banana-cashew bread is long cool, and dinner is eaten, and the house is clean, almost all due to Miguel's diligence, he is a much more efficient cleaner than I... too distractible and solicited to get the chaos to subside. In my defense, I did do the bathroom and my bedroom and the Kitchen and the cooking of dinner (shrimp in garlic sauce on a bed of baby spinach, pearl tomatoes and cashews with a balsamic vinaigrette)... The pumpkin bread is in the oven, which I am also responsible for, and its hearthy aroma is wafting through the house.

Urgent. can't lose this recipe, it is wonderful, but also irreplaceable, copied from a Stoneyfield Yogurt container last holiday season, and therefore ultimately unattributeable (sorry whoever the author was!)

Best damn pumpkin bread on the planet.

Wet:
1 cup good organic yogurt (vanilla or plain)
1 15-16 oz. organic pumpkin puree (no spices/sugar added)
1/3 cup canola oil
2 cups! (I know it is alot, but this *is* a dessert bread) sugar (a little less if using vanilla yogurt)
3 eggs beaten to a foam and then folded in

also spices should be added to pumpkin or to flour mixture but not at the end!
2tsp cinnamon
3 tsp nutmeg
(alternatively - 5 tsp pumpkin pie spice if lacking proper ingredients)

Dry:
3 cups flour (I never sift and it always works, but you can do what makes you most comfortable)
1tsp salt
1/2 TBS baking soda
1TBS baking powder.
Add this in small amounts to the wet mixture, and stir until completely integrated into a smooth, creamy batter.

Put into two greased and floured bread pans and insert (ha ha) into previously heated 400 oven, for 35-40 minutes or until toothpick comes out dry upon piercing the skin of the loaf down to its core...

I remembered!

So, Isabella has been bathed and her beautifully straight hair combed. How I longed my whole life to be able to pull a brush through silky hair, just once, to watch it fall like satin in a perfectly straight line (like the awful Pantene commercials that make you want to buy the product just so you will have hair so perfect, even though you KNOW it is all a lie). Living vicariously seems to be what I do best, so her hair will have to be the hair of my dreams, instead of the horrible rat's nest that I was awarded, a crowning jewel to cap my decadent brain.

While I combed, she sat at the new desk her daddy bought, and turned on her computer (a free one obtained from a man who offered it in the SB independent) and proceeded to astonish us with her savvy. She knew exactly which game to play and how to manipulate the rat (wait, English, mouse) and then how to turn it off, and how to draw pictures. I am impressed, my mother can't even figure that out for herself... ah, yes, children are fabulous. She keeps asking when our guests are going to arrive, and I keep saying soon, soon, and now, she has curled up on the newly purchased bench and has fallen asleep next to me.

The pumpkin bread is now out of the oven, it turns a dark mahogany color, and I forgot to mention that if desired, whole wheat flour is wonderful, if a bit heavy... but I didn't do that today.

Ok, so I am a bit nervous about tomorrow for two reasons. 1) I have no place to seat my guests and hope people don't mind gathering around the coffee table and such... actually I am sure they won't care as a) most are not American and therefore have no preconceived notions of how a "real" Thanksgiving should be and b) they are my friends and therefore absolutely casual and unceremonious people...
2) I have (big secret!) never cooked a turkey before, and if I fuck up, I just spent a week's worth of grocery money on an unedible piece of meat. Yes, a week's worth. $50 for a turkey that must have been fondled to death after its resort-style free-range-life. I wish I were a free-range turkey... no worries, no nasty antibiotics or hormones (grrrrr. I hate having been subjected to synthetic and unnatural hormones... can't wait 'til Kirsten gets this male contraception thing going strong... why should we be the ones poked and prodded, like cattle or non-free range turkeys just because we have the receptacles of life??? especially when it is many times they who don't want the children!)


Now I just have to keep my eyes open until they get here. I bet the traffic from the bay area was (or continues to be) horrid.
The benefits of staying home.

I am amazed that I feel like this is home, and not just because I am surrounded by my things, but I feel more at home here in CA (despite all the pseudo-hippie, new age tweak-outs) than I did for years in the North East... Not to say that I am totally not up-tight (I have my moments) but if I have to choose a death, wildfires or earth that splits open to swallow me, are eternally more appealing than spinning off the highway into a frozen lake, or simply withering in an icy nothingness, white-out (which, let's be honest is more statistically probable than being swallowed by the earth).

I notice that I have become Californian in my temperature sensitivity too. I am COLD, for instance, right now, where this would be considered mild in NH. How we adapt to our environment. So very easy to forget who we are and where we come from, or to construct a mythical homeland, eternally unattainable, or ultimately disappointing if we were to ever try and return. People die over less. They kill eachother for the idea of a place, not even the place itself. Why is that? I wonder.
Why do we even care?

See here I go again waxing philosophical when all this was supposed to be about was a pumpkin bread recipe. Damn me. I am about as deep as a puddle of piss on hot asphalt. Better stop now. Or else...