Pumpkin Banana Bread with Browned Butter Frosting

Late September. Week four. Another win — thirty-five to fourteen, on the road, against a team that had given us trouble for a half last year. We solved them in the second quarter. Diego had a long touchdown on a slant-and-go that Marcus threw with a perfect ball-side touch. Daquan had three sacks and a forced fumble. The defense recovered the fumble for a TD. Anthony had two pass breakups. We are 4-0. The schedule gets a little easier for two weeks then gets very hard for the last three weeks of the regular season.

The other story of the game was that there were five college scouts in the stands. I counted them in the third quarter. They were there for Daquan, mostly — three of the SEC programs that have been recruiting him hard, one Big Ten program, one Pac-12. But Diego got noticed. Marcus got noticed. Anthony got noticed. The Big Ten scout came up to me after the game and said, "Coach, your offense is hard to scout." I said, "Why." He said, "Because you do not put the same players in the same spots twice. The eighty-three on the field side in the first quarter was the eighty-three on the field side in the third quarter, but the route concepts had completely shifted. Who calls your offense." I said, "Mike Reyes." He said, "I am going to be calling Mike Reyes about a job in three years." I said, "Get in line." He laughed. He went to find his car.

Saturday I made pumpkin posole. This is a once-a-year dish I started making about eight years ago. The traditional posole is pork with hominy, but in late September I do a version with roasted pumpkin and shredded chicken, which is a riff I borrowed from a Oaxacan cookbook and have refined into something that is now firmly in the family rotation. The pumpkin gets roasted with garlic and a little chile. The chicken gets shredded into a broth with hominy, oregano, and tomatillo. The pumpkin chunks go in last. You serve it with the standard posole garnishes — cabbage, radish, lime, oregano, more chile — and the result is a soup that tastes like fall and like Mexico and like New Mexico all at the same time. Marco does not like pumpkin and ate around the chunks. Elena ate the chunks first. Sofia ate her bowl with a quiet appreciation that she does not always show. Diego ate two bowls. Lisa ate hers very slowly with a piece of cornbread Lisa's mother had sent up from Colorado Springs in a careful tinfoil package.

Lisa was in a quiet mood Saturday. I noticed it at lunch. By dinner she was still quiet. I asked her after the kids had gone to bed if she was okay. She said, "I am thinking about my dad." Lisa's father is seventy-eight, a retired electrician in Colorado Springs, and he has had heart issues for fifteen years that have been slowly getting worse. Lisa's mother died ten years ago. Her father lives alone with the cat. Lisa drives down once a month and her sister Carrie drives down twice a month and the three of them — Lisa, Carrie, their brother who lives in Phoenix — manage him long distance with a level of vigilance that has gotten more intense over the past year. He fell three weeks ago. He did not break anything. But he fell. And the falling is the thing.

I sat with Lisa at the kitchen island. I asked her what she was thinking. She said, "I am thinking that my dad is going to need to move. I am thinking that I do not know how to make that happen. I am thinking that he is going to fight it. I am thinking that Carrie and I are going to have to be the people who push it through, and that I do not have the bandwidth in October during football season to push it through, and that if I wait until December the next thing is going to happen and I will be doing this in a crisis instead of in a planned way." I said, "Yeah." I said, "I have watched your father resist almost everything for fifteen years. He resisted retiring. He resisted going to the doctor for the heart thing. He is going to resist the move." She said, "I know." I said, "I am going to drive down with you the next time. I will be there. Whatever the conversation is, I will be there." She said, "Thank you." I said, "Lisa. He is not your problem to solve alone. He is our problem to solve. You and me, you and Carrie. I will be there for the conversation." She put her head on my shoulder. We sat there for a while. The pumpkin posole was on the stove behind us, the smell still in the kitchen. Some Saturdays the conversation is about football. Some Saturdays the conversation is about a seventy-eight-year-old father-in-law in Colorado Springs. Both kinds of Saturday are part of the job. Feed your people. The game is won at the table.

The posole was the dinner, but Saturday nights like that one call for something to keep the kitchen alive a little longer — something with pumpkin that Marco could still eat around, that Elena would attack first, and that Lisa could have a slice of with her coffee the next morning without having to say anything at all. Pumpkin banana bread with browned butter frosting is that thing. It is fall in a loaf pan. It smells like the season and like the house and like the kind of October that makes you want to stay inside and take care of your people. I baked it while the posole pot cooled on the stove. By Sunday morning, half of it was gone.

Prep Time: 15 min | Cook Time: 60 min | Total Time: 1 hr 15 min | Servings: 10 slices

Ingredients

1 cup pumpkin puree (not pumpkin pie filling)
2 ripe bananas, mashed
2 eggs
1/3 cup vegetable oil
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/4 cup brown sugar, packed
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
1/2 teaspoon salt
Browned Butter Frosting:
4 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 cup powdered sugar, sifted
2 tablespoons whole milk
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
Pinch of salt

Instructions

Preheat the oven. Heat oven to 350°F. Grease a 9x5-inch loaf pan and line it with parchment paper, leaving an overhang on the long sides for easy removal.
Mix the wet ingredients. In a large bowl, whisk together the pumpkin puree, mashed bananas, eggs, oil, granulated sugar, brown sugar, and vanilla extract until smooth and well combined.
Combine the dry ingredients. In a separate bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, baking powder, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, and salt.
Fold together. Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and stir gently until just combined. Do not overmix — a few streaks of flour are fine. The batter will be thick.
Bake. Pour the batter into the prepared loaf pan and smooth the top. Bake for 55 to 65 minutes, until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. If the top is browning too quickly, tent loosely with foil after 40 minutes. Cool in the pan for 15 minutes, then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely before frosting.
Brown the butter. In a small saucepan over medium heat, melt the butter and continue cooking, swirling frequently, until it turns a deep golden brown and smells nutty, about 4 to 6 minutes. Watch it carefully — it goes from golden to burnt quickly. Remove from heat and let cool for 5 minutes.
Make the frosting. Whisk the browned butter into the sifted powdered sugar along with the milk, vanilla, and pinch of salt. Stir until smooth and spreadable. If too thick, add milk a teaspoon at a time. If too thin, add more powdered sugar.
Frost and serve. Spread the browned butter frosting over the completely cooled loaf. Let it set for 10 minutes before slicing. Store covered at room temperature for up to 3 days, or refrigerate for up to 5 days.

Nutrition (per serving)

Pumpkin Banana Bread with Browned Butter Frosting — The Smell Still in the Kitchen