By Week 502, and the apples arriving, the squash at the farm stand, the light turning golden, the kitchen shifting to soups and stews. I am 68 years old and the days have a rhythm now — the morning writing, the afternoon visits to Cedarhurst, the evening cooking, the weekly blog post — and the rhythm is the structure, and the structure is the sanity, and the sanity is required because the rest of it, the losing and the loving and the carrying, requires a sane woman at the helm, and I am sane, mostly, except when I cry in the car in the Cedarhurst parking lot, which is not insanity but its opposite: the specific, targeted release of emotion in a contained space, which is the most rational thing I do all week.
Sixth Passover without Marvin; Sophie matzo balls; seder at Cedarhurst. These are the facts of the week, the data points, the things I would put in a report if I were writing a report, which I am not — I am writing a life, and the life includes the facts but is not limited to them, because the life also includes the way the kitchen smells at six in the morning when the coffee is brewing and the challah is rising and the house is quiet and the quiet is both the grief and the peace, simultaneously, and the simultaneous is the condition, the permanent condition of a woman who is 68 and alone and not alone, who is a grandmother and a wife and a writer and a cook and a caregiver and all of these things at once, always at once, braided together like the challah.
I made brisket and matzo ball soup this week — because it was what the week needed, because the week always needs something and the something is always food, and the food is always the answer, and the answer is always the kitchen, and the kitchen is always mine, and the mine-ness of the kitchen is the one thing that has not changed in sixty-seven years of living, from Sylvia's kitchen on the Grand Concourse to this kitchen in Oceanside where I stand every morning and every evening and many of the hours in between, making the food that is the chain, that is the love, that is the thing I do when I don't know what else to do, which is always, and especially now.
I brought food to Marvin at the usual time. The visit was what visits are now — quiet, steady, the feeding by hand when necessary, the reading aloud always, the holding of the hand that may or may not know it is being held but that is warm and alive and present, which is the definition of love in this particular year: warm and alive and present. He ate what I brought. He received what I gave. The receiving is the relationship. The receiving is the vow. In sickness and in health, in recognition and in forgetting, in the recliner and in the kitchen, the receiving is the marriage, and the marriage continues, one container at a time, one visit at a time, one day at a time, at two o'clock, every day, because the chain does not break.
After a week like this one — the seder at Cedarhurst, the hand-feeding, the parking-lot tears, the brisket and the matzo balls made and carried and received — I needed something to make for myself, something soft and unhurried that asked nothing of me except that I stand at the counter and stir. The light was still golden and the squash was still on the counter and the oven was already warm from the day’s cooking, so I made these pumpkin bars: simple, forgiving, the kind of thing that fills the kitchen with a smell that is not grief and not joy but something braided between them, which is exactly the smell this kitchen needs right now.
Soft Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Bars
Prep Time: 15 minutes | Cook Time: 25 minutes | Total Time: 40 minutes | Servings: 24 bars
Ingredients
- 2 cups all-purpose flour
- 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
- 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
- 1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
- 1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
- 1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
- 1 cup granulated sugar
- 1/2 cup packed light brown sugar
- 2 large eggs, room temperature
- 1 cup canned pumpkin puree (not pumpkin pie filling)
- 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
- 1 1/2 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips
Instructions
- Preheat — prepare pan. Heat oven to 350°F. Grease a 9×13-inch baking pan and line with parchment paper, leaving an overhang on two sides for easy lifting.
- Whisk dry ingredients. In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves. Set aside.
- Cream butter and sugars. In a large bowl, beat the softened butter with the granulated sugar and brown sugar on medium speed until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes.
- Add wet ingredients. Beat in the eggs one at a time, then mix in the pumpkin puree and vanilla extract until fully combined. The batter may look slightly curdled — that is normal.
- Combine. Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and stir gently until just combined. Do not overmix. Fold in the chocolate chips.
- Spread — bake. Spread the batter evenly into the prepared pan. Bake for 23–27 minutes, until the center is set and a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out with just a few moist crumbs (not wet batter).
- Cool — cut. Allow bars to cool completely in the pan on a wire rack, at least 45 minutes. Lift out using the parchment overhang and cut into 24 bars.
Nutrition (per serving)
Calories: 220 | Protein: 2g | Fat: 12g | Carbs: 28g | Fiber: 1g | Sodium: 110mg