Pumpkin Raisin Bread -- Baked for the Halloweens Still to Come

Halloween in Seattle, eighteen weeks pregnant. I went to the Bellevue house on Saturday to help David hand out candy, a tradition I had participated in as a child and then abandoned for twenty years and am now resuming because pregnancy makes you want to return to the rituals of your childhood, as though stacking traditions around the baby will create a protective wall of normalcy. David had bought eight bags of candy. Karen was in the living room watching a Hitchcock movie. The doorbell rang every three minutes. David answered it every time with genuine enthusiasm, as though each group of trick-or-treaters was the first he had ever seen. "Well, look at you! A dinosaur! Excellent costume!" He is eighty and he has the energy of a man who has been waiting all year for this one night.

Karen came to the door once, to see a group of three small girls dressed as Disney princesses. She held the candy bowl with both hands — the tremor was visible, the bowl trembling slightly — and she said, "Oh, how beautiful you all are." One of the girls, maybe five, said, "Why are your hands shaking?" Karen said, without hesitation, "Because I'm excited to see you." The girl accepted this. I accepted this. It was, in its way, true.

I thought about next Halloween. The baby will be seven months old. Too young for trick-or-treating but not too young for a costume. James and I will dress the baby in something absurd — a pumpkin, probably, the way Karen dressed me as a pumpkin in 1995. The cycle continues. Pumpkin costumes across generations. Karen will be there, hands shaking, holding the candy bowl, telling small princesses she is shaking because she is excited. I want her to be there. I need her to be there. The medication is working. The Parkinson's is progressing slowly. Slowly is the word we cling to now. Slowly means time. Time means more Halloweens.

Banchan Labs: October box shipped. 2,100 subscribers now — a 5% growth from September. The comfort-themed box was well received. James showed me the metrics on Sunday: 94% retention, 4.7-star average review, a 23% referral rate (subscribers referring friends). We are growing organically, the way I wanted. No ads. No venture capital. Just good food and word of mouth and recipe cards that make people cry.

Dr. Yoon this week: we talked about the Busan trip, about Jisoo naming the baby, about the way the pregnancy is reshaping my relationship to time. She said, "You are thinking about the future differently now." I said, "I am thinking about the future as a place where my child exists." She said, "And how does that change the present?" I said, "It makes the present more urgent. More precious. More breakable." She said, "The present has always been breakable. You are just noticing it now because you have something you cannot bear to lose."

The recipe this week is roasted pumpkin soup, because it is Halloween and I am sentimental. A small sugar pumpkin, halved, seeded, roasted at 400 degrees until soft. Scoop the flesh. Blend with sautéed onion, garlic, chicken stock, a splash of cream, salt, and a pinch of gochugaru (because I put gochugaru in everything). The soup is smooth and orange and sweet and warming. Serve with a swirl of cream and toasted pumpkin seeds. Eat while handing out candy. Eat while thinking about pumpkin costumes. Eat while the baby, the size of a bell pepper, grows inside you, becoming more human every day, becoming more yours, becoming more.

I did not end up making only soup that night. After the last trick-or-treater, after the porch light went off and Karen settled back into her Hitchcock movie, I found myself in the kitchen with the remaining sugar pumpkin flesh and a need to bake something that would last — something I could wrap up, carry home, and eat slowly over the next few days while thinking about next Halloween, and the one after that, and all the ones I want Karen to be there for. Pumpkin raisin bread felt exactly right: warm, a little sweet, the kind of thing you make because you are sentimental and the season demands it and you cannot think of a better way to hold on to a good night than to bake it into something you can keep.

Pumpkin Raisin Bread

Prep Time: 15 min | Cook Time: 65 min | Total Time: 1 hr 20 min | Servings: 10 slices

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
• 1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
• 1 cup pumpkin puree (fresh roasted or canned)
• 3/4 cup granulated sugar
• 1/3 cup vegetable oil
• 2 large eggs
• 1/4 cup water
• 3/4 cup raisins

Instructions

1. Preheat and prepare. Preheat your oven to 350°F (175°C). Grease a 9x5-inch loaf pan and set aside.
2. Combine dry ingredients. In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves until evenly blended.
3. Mix wet ingredients. In a separate bowl, whisk together the pumpkin puree, sugar, vegetable oil, eggs, and water until smooth and well combined.
4. Bring it together. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and stir gently until just combined — do not overmix. Fold in the raisins.
5. Bake. Pour the batter into the prepared loaf pan and smooth the top. Bake for 60–65 minutes, until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean and the top is deep golden brown.
6. Cool before slicing. Let the bread cool in the pan for 10 minutes, then turn out onto a wire rack and cool completely before slicing. It slices cleanest when fully cool.

Nutrition (per serving)

Calories: 230 | Protein: 4g | Fat: 8g | Carbs: 38g | Fiber: 2g | Sodium: 210mg