We’re down to the last couple loaves of sourdough bread in the freezer, so the other morning I got my starter babies out of the fridge and began to rev them up again. In the meantime, however, I mixed up a triple recipe of oatmeal bread. We needed something to tide us over for the following several days, and I realized that I hadn’t made oatmeal bread in a long time, at least as long as I’ve had this blog. I was quite surprised that I had gone for so long without making something as basic as oatmeal bread. And something as delicious as oatmeal bread. I love oatmeal bread. (How many times did I just say “oatmeal bread”?)

This bread is like candy, soft and sweet and tender and chewy. Yesterday we ate it fresh—thick slices spread with butter and honey or grape jelly, along with our dinner, a soup of collard greens, ham, and lentils.

(The kids hated the soup, but they gagged it down. Literally. Yo-Yo Boy dry-heaved once. I had no mercy, snapping at him, “If you’re going to do that then go to the bathroom.” It took them about an hour to eat that one ladle of soup. An hour! I got so furious at them for turning their noses up at what I considered to be perfectly reasonable and delectable fare that I had a screaming hissy fit about how I was sick of cooking good food and then having no one eat it, and then I stomped off upstairs to get my shower and sulk. When I came back down, Miss Becca Boo, who was still eating, happily showed me a dollar bill that Yo-Yo Boy was going to give her if she finished her soup. My son was paying my daughter to finish her soup? I will never understand my children.)

But back to the bread, the oatmeal bread. It makes really good toast, sandwiches, dinner rolls, whatever. It’s just really good.

Oatmeal Bread
Adapted from the More-With-Less Cookbook

Don’t try to bulk up this recipe with whole grains, at least not the first go-round. Make it as is, so that you get to taste it in all its glory. After that, feel free to dump in more whole wheat, flax meal, and whatever else makes you feel self-righteous.

1 cup quick oats
½ cup whole wheat flour
½ cup brown sugar
1 tablespoon salt
2 tablespoons butter
2 cups boiling water
1 tablespoon yeast
½ cup warm water
5 cups white flour

In a small bowl, mix together the yeast and ½ cup warm water and a pinch of sugar and set aside to dissolve and froth.

Measure the first five ingredients into a large bowl and then pour the boiling water over them, stirring well to combine. Allow the mixture to sit for at least 15 minutes so that the grains can soften and plump and so the water can cool down enough to not kill the yeast. When the mixture is only slightly warm, add the yeast, stir well, and then add the rest of the flour. Knead for five to ten minutes, adding more flour if necessary. Sprinkle the bottom of the dirty bread bowl with flour and set the dough back in, dusting the top with flour and then covering with a cloth. Allow the dough to rise until doubled, then cut into two loaves and place in well-greased bread pans. Let rise till nearly doubled, and bake at 350 degrees for 25-40 minutes.

A single recipe makes two loaves, a double recipe makes three (I make generous loaves), and a triple recipe makes five loaves.

My babies are waking up! I got them out of the fridge yesterday morning; the poor things looked chilled to the bone, watery, and weak. So pathetic and sad! I almost felt guilty.

They clearly needed to get the blood moving again. To stir some life back into them. To eat something! So, I did what any good mom does when her kids look cold and weepy—I fed them (just water and flour, nothing fancy) and almost immediately, it seemed, they were back to their boisterous, tangy-scented selves. It made my heart swell with pride, it did! Silverton says to wait for three days before baking after chilling the starter, but I bet I could’ve baked with them today.

Anyway, all that to say: We’re back in business, folks, and I have a couple new recipes up my sleeve. Well, at least one … but I think it’s a good one. It involves pumpkin seeds and a sweet potato. Just in time for Thanksgiving, too.

1. I read Sarah, Plain and Tall, by Patricia MacLachlan, for the first time in my life this past weekend. I picked it up off the shelf in the library and had to ask the librarian if it was an abridged version since it was so thin. She said that no, it was the real thing. I read it to the kids in three days (we could’ve easily done it in one sitting) and finished it up on Sunday night. I don’t normally cry when I read to the kids (I do get a little choked up sometimes), but somewhere in the last chapter I started crying and I didn’t stop till I finished the book. I don’t mean a little sniffle cry; I mean, a tears-streaming-down-my-cheeks-and-Miss-Becca-Boo-flying-into-my-lap-to-hug-me type of cry. It is an exquisite book.

2. My Aunt Valerie gave me a new tip when she last visited me. She told me to save all the fruit juices that you have left in the bottom of your jars and use them to replace some or all of the water in your granola recipes. So in my last batch of granola I included sweet cherry juice, the dregs of the jar of apple cider, and some peach juice. I don’t detect a change in the flavor, but it makes me feel kind of smug to do it.

3. I have always cut up my squashes and pumpkins and boiled them till tender and then scraped out the flesh to use in pies and other dishes, but this year I decided to learn how to roast them. All you do is wash the pumpkin, cut it in half, scoop out the seeds, cut it into smaller chunks, and set the chunks skin-side-down on cookie sheets.

Cover the pumpkin with big sheets of tinfoil (I save them for the next time I do a pumpkin bake) and bake it in the oven at 350 degrees for a couple hours till the pumpkin is fork-tender.

After the pumpkin cools for a bit,

scoop out the meaty flesh.

Allow the scooped-out pumpkin to sit in the bowl for a little because some more liquid will ooze out which can then be poured off.

Pack the pumpkin into pint-sized boxes and pop them in the freezer.