A few of my favorite cookbooks along with some pumpkin peanut butter bread

Open my cookbook cupboard with caution. If you move too quickly, you’ll be deluged with recipe clippings. Because though I have a good many cookbooks, I’m always hungry to try something new.

My mother had a similar cupboard stuffed full of both cookbooks and loose clippings. An enthusiastic cook with a large family to feed, she loved supplementing favorite recipes from the red-and-white checked cooking bible of her era: The Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook.

My go-to cookbook–The Fanny Farmer Cookbook–was the first gift I ever gave my then future husband. He’d learned to cook from a paperback edition found in a drawer of a Korean apartment he lived in as a young Mormon missionary. Valentine’s Day came around a few months into our courtship and not wanting to play my hand too broadly, I figured a cookbook he’d mentioned with fond feelings might convey just enough interest in heating up our relationship.

After our marriage, Fanny was joined by other staples of the ‘80s – Julee Rosso and Sheila Lukins’ The Silver Palate Cookbooks, Martha Stewart’s Entertaining and Maida Heatter’s Book of Great Desserts.

Cookbooks by celebrated local chef/authors like Alice Waters, Deborah Madison and Marion Cunningham (who would revise Fanny) would eventually fill up my cookbook cupboard.

I also added clippings from the San Francisco Chronicle and the Los Angeles Times. Reading their weekly food sections was a treat I looked forward to consuming.

As a new college graduate and young bride, I worked as a receptionist in the management office of the neo-Gothic Russ Building in downtown San Francisco. Across the hall from my office was a spacious “Ladies Lounge” filled with couches and chairs left over from the Mad Men era. Secretaries would retreat there during their lunch hours to nibble on sack lunches and read paperback novels.

I remember devouring a range of literary pleasures there—Pride & Prejudice and The Far Pavilions are two titles that come to mind. But every Wednesday, I would buy the Times at the lobby newsstand and quickly turn to its food section, having already read the Chronicle’s on my morning commute.

One of the recipes that I clipped during that period is still a fall favorite. Its ingredients are as varied as my reading tastes—pumpkin and peanut butter chips. But the result is surprisingly good—like a mix of classic literature and contemporary romance.

I wish I still had the original clipping so I could credit the contributor and discover this quick bread’s origin, but alas, all I have is my own handwritten notes that attribute it to the Chronicle without a date. Seems I wasn’t as devoted to historical accuracy then as I am now.

Over this pandemic year, I developed an increased appetite for newspaper recipes. The New York Times temporarily replaced its Sunday Travel section with a new section called “At Home.” Each week it featured five simple recipes to help us all survive sheltering in place. Once things opened up this summer, the section closed down. I miss that weekly feast.

However, a regular diet of newspaper clippings over the pandemic didn’t keep me from indulging in a few new cookbooks –Joanne Chang’s Pastry Love and Claire Saffitz’s Dessert Person are favorites. They came to my attention through reviews and sample recipes in newspaper food sections. Which is why I’ll keep clipping and you should be careful if you ever open my cookbook cupboard.

PUMPKIN BREAD WITH PEANUT BUTTER CHIPS

3 1/2 c. unsifted all-purpose flour

3 c. sugar

2 tsp. baking soda

1 1/2 tsp. salt

1 tsp. cinnamon

2 c. cooked or canned pumpkin

2/3 c. water

1 c. vegetable oil

4 eggs

2 c. (12 oz pkg) peanut butter chips

1 c. chopped nuts

1 c. raisins (optional)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease and flour three 8 1/2 x 4 1/2 x 2 1/2-inch loaf pans (or two larger pans.) Blend dry ingredients in a medium mixing bowl. In a large bowl blend pumpkin, oil, water and eggs.

Gradually add dry ingredients until well blended. Stir in peanut butter chips, nuts and raisins. Pour into greased and floured pans. Bake for 50-60 minutes or until a cake tester comes out clean.  Cool in pan ten minutes and remove from pan to cool completely.

Note: My husband and several of my kids prefer this without raisins. Go figure. It’s still good. Especially toasted and slathered with butter. Peanut butter chips can sometimes be hard to find. Do not be tempted to substitute butterscotch chips—they’re too sweet.

This essay originally appeared on paperlanternwriters.com

This was a busier than usual holiday season with all the kids and spouses (and a new fiance!) home.  So I’m just now taking a few moments to ponder some favorite things from 2014.  Perhaps you too are finding this Friday more about retrospection than resolutions.  If so, you might also be thinking about some of your favorite things in 2014. With the help of Goodreads, Spotify and my Calendar 5 app here are my top three 2014 things in a range of design and entertainment categories.

Best International Design Things

This was a year of extraordinary travel for me. It’s hard to pick just three highlights, so I fudged a little here.

Macchu Pichu and other wonders of the Andes  - Peru

Swiss Open-Air Museum – Ballenberg, Switzerland

Porsche Museum + Weissenhof Estate – Stuttgart, Germany

Best Domestic Design Things

Matisse: The Cut-Outs (particularly the “Swimming Pool” dining room installation) – MoMA, NYC

Surf Craft – MinGei Museum, San Diego, CA

San Francisco Decorator Showcase 2014

Best Books

Goodreads tells me that I read or listened to 26 books last year.  Looking over the list I could tell you a few things l liked–and some things I didn’t–about every one of them.  But here are the three books published in 2014 that will stay me.

Frog Music - Emma Donoghue

Levels of Life – Julian Barnes

Station Eleven – Emily St. John Mandel

Best  Cookbooks

Looking back, I primarily cooked from old favorite cookbooks and blogs. However, three new welcome additions include:

Barefoot Contessa: Make It Ahead - Ina Garten

My Paris Kitchen - David Leibovitz

Plenty - Yotam Ottolenghi

Best Movies

Travel and our mid-year move cut down some of our first run movie watching this year, but three films I expect to recall include:

Beyond the Lights

Boyhood

Noah

Best TV

So little time to watch TV, really, though this is the year I figured out what all the buzz about Scandal and The Americans was about. Otherwise, I sat still long enough to watch these new shows/seasons:

Blackish

Hell on Wheels: Season 4

Jane the Virgin

Best Theater

We saw a number of terrific plays last year including a hilarious/creepy/touching community theater production of Side-Show starring one of M.J.’s work colleagues. Here’s the best of the rest.

The House That Will Not Stand – Berkeley Rep

Tribes – Berkeley Rep

Pygmalion – Cal Shakes

Best Music

According to Spotify’s Year in Music feature, a third of what I listened to last year was folk-pop and I mostly listened to it on Tuesday.  Go figure.  Right now I’m writing this post to a new playlist of unknowns that Spotify has produced for me based on my 2014 history.  Lots of folksy pop tunes—pleasant, not-too-demanding stuff to evoke a mood while I think about other things.  Here are three artists and songs that stood out from the lyrical hushed emotions that were apparently the soundtrack of my 2014:

Mary Lambert – Jessie’s Girl

Noah Gundersen – Poor Man’s Son

James Vincent Morrow – Cavalier

Best Live Music (including Musical Theater)

Though I heard lots of good performances in my church community we didn’t attend too many other concerts or musicals (with the exception of the VERY BAD Idina Menzel vehicle “If/Then” on Broadway) this year.  These three were terrific, nevertheless:

Glen Hansard – Fox Theater, Oakland

Into the Woods – San Francisco Playhouse

The California Revels “An American Journey” – Scottish Rites Theater, Oakland

Looking forward to discovering some new favorite things with you in 2015.