Pumpkin Spice Bread

Pumpkin patches in Snohomish. Amazon this week. Sprint planning Tuesday. Two hours of meetings I could have been a Slack message.

Hana, 1, a small loud animal. She mostly eats rice and bananas. Jisoo FaceTimed Tuesday. We made doenjang jjigae together — me in Wallingford, her in Haeundae. Eleven thousand miles. The same soup.

Jeon Saturday — pajeon, kimchijeon, the savory pancakes. Saturday afternoon ritual.

Drove to Bellevue Saturday. Karen was tired. I brought soft food. She ate.

I FaceTimed Jisoo in the morning. She watched me make doenjang jjigae and corrected my technique. The chain extends.

I texted Jisoo a photo of the kimchi in the new onggi pot. She replied with the thumb-up emoji and a Korean-language critique. The duality is the gift.

Yoga Tuesday morning at the studio. The forward fold released something I had been carrying in the shoulder. The mat is the mat.

The shiso on the south fence is fragrant and unruly. I brushed past it taking the compost out and the smell stopped me. The smell is the country. The smell is Jisoo's apartment.

The kimchi crock was bubbling Saturday morning when I checked. The bubbling is the right bubbling. The fermentation knew what it was doing.

A blog reader wrote about her own adoptee experience. We exchanged three emails this week.

Reading at night. A novel by a Korean-American writer about a family in 1990s LA. I underlined four sentences. The underlining is the marking-of-the-territory of the soul.

David came over for Sunday dinner. He brought some tomatoes from the Bellevue garden.

The Capitol Hill apartment kitchen is small. We make it work.

James and I had date night Friday. Indian restaurant on 45th. We ate too much. We sat in the car after talking about nothing for an hour. The marriage is the marriage.

My Korean is improving. Slowly. Painfully. Conversationally adequate now. I can argue about kimchi proportions in two languages, which is a milestone in any marriage between mother and daughter.

I sat at the kitchen counter at six AM with a notebook and a cup of green tea. Writing time before the house wakes. The pre-light hour is the only writing hour I trust.

The newsletter went out Sunday morning. The opening sentence took an hour. The piece took five. The piece was what it needed to be.

Sprint review at Amazon Friday. Two hours. I could have been on a podcast.

Jisoo sent a photo of the dol the kids did for our visit last summer. The photo went on the fridge.

Sunday farmers market on Wallingford Avenue. The kabocha at the Asian vendor's stall. The shishito peppers. The brokered conversation. We bought too much. We always do.

Hana left a Lego on the kitchen floor. I stepped on it at two AM. Standard.

Rain on the porch all afternoon Saturday. The Wallingford rain is its own weather. I sat with a book and a tea and did not move for two hours.

I made coffee at seven. Hana ate cereal at seven-fifteen. Min wandered down at seven-twenty-five. James left for work at eight. The morning was the morning. The standard.

Therapy Tuesday with Dr. Kim. We talked about the parents — the two sets, the one living, the one gone, the one who became real after thirty years and the one who was real my whole life and is now gone. The work is the layered work.

I read a thread on the Korean Adoptee subreddit Saturday. Some posts brought up old anger. Most are people figuring it out in real time. We are not unique. We are a community.

The kabocha came home from the Wallingford farmers market on Sunday, and the pie pumpkins were still in a paper bag by the door from Snohomish — and at some point on that rain-soaked Saturday afternoon, with a book in my lap and nowhere to be, the only thing that made sense was to bake something warm and unhurried. Jeon is the ritual I return to most, but pumpkin spice bread is what I reach for when the week has been long and the house is quiet and I want something that fills the kitchen with a smell that competes with the shiso on the fence. It’s not Korean, it’s not Jisoo’s — it’s just mine, and some weeks that’s exactly right.

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

Ingredients

1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp fine sea salt
1 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground ginger
1/4 tsp ground nutmeg
1/4 tsp ground cloves
1 cup canned pure pumpkin puree (or roasted kabocha, well-drained)
3/4 cup granulated sugar
1/4 cup packed brown sugar
2 large eggs, room temperature
1/2 cup neutral oil (such as avocado or canola)
1/4 cup whole milk or oat milk
1 tsp pure vanilla extract

Instructions

Preheat. Heat oven to 350°F (175°C). Grease a 9x5-inch loaf pan and line with parchment, leaving overhang on the long sides.
Whisk dry ingredients. In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, and cloves until evenly combined.
Mix wet ingredients. In a separate bowl, whisk together the pumpkin puree, granulated sugar, brown sugar, eggs, oil, milk, and vanilla until smooth and well combined.
Combine. Pour the wet mixture into the dry ingredients and fold gently with a spatula until just combined — a few streaks of flour are fine. Do not overmix.
Bake. Pour batter into the prepared pan and smooth the top. Bake for 55–65 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean and the top is deep golden brown.
Cool. Let the loaf cool in the pan for 10 minutes, then use the parchment overhang to lift it onto a wire rack. Cool for at least 20 minutes before slicing.

Nutrition (per serving)

Pumpkin Spice Bread — The Kabocha on the Counter, the Rain on the Porch