Happy November! Get cozy! Moisturize! Read! Write! Bake!
Hi Friends! I'm back at home after a whirlwind week and a half on the road for Royal Holiday, which also included a stop at The Today Show! I was on with Isaac Fitzgerald and Jason Reynolds, and you can see the segment here (there's an extra book from each of us online so read the list too!). And possibly even more importantly, we got to meet Magic Johnson right after our segment, which you can see on my Instagram (he was VERY nice and we were all starstruck). Oh, and speaking of Instagram, I'm doing a little giveaway for a signed copy of The Proposal there, in honor of it being out for a year now -- follow me and comment here to enter (I said the deadline was noon Pacific today, but I'm sending this out later than I intended to, so I'll be flexible on that).
And just in case it's too much for you to click through right now (I've been there!), the four books I recommended for The Today Show were The Yellow House, Red at the Bone, The Right Swipe, and Dear Haiti, Love Alaine. Two of those books I've recommended in this newsletter already, but the last two I haven't, and you should all go out and buy and read them right now, because I loved them a whole lot. They are both fun and funny and joyful, while dealing with difficult situations, and I was so happy to get to tell so many people about them.
Here is a very affordable and useful for this time of year product that I fell in love with while on the road for the past few weeks: Jergen's Wet Skin Moisturizer. I bought a travel size impulsively right before I left on my trip, and I was so glad I had it; going from airplane to hotel room to airplane means so much dry air, and my skin felt so much better once I put this on. When I got home to the incredibly dry Bay Area, I promptly went out and bought a full size of it, and I have a feeling I'll be using it a lot this fall and winter.
If you've had that novel in your head for a while, but haven't committed to yourself yet to write it, I highly recommend NaNoWriMo to take that leap! I wrote the first 50,000 words of the first draft of The Wedding Date during NaNo, and I've used the lessons that taught me for all of my books since then. And I'm taking my own advice here -- I'm going to dive in and do NaNo (for at least part of the month) to get the first draft of Book Five done, so join me (and will spend the rest of the month...and the year, revising and revising it). Feel free to ask me any questions about NaNo!
I cannot wait to bake for the entire month of November. I was away from home so much in October, and even when I was here I was so busy that I cooked very little, and I'm going to the grocery store later today to stock up on butter and sugar and eggs and all of the good stuff I need. First up is going to be this pumpkin bread, which I gave you all the recipe for two years ago, but I'm repeating it now because there are a bunch more of you than there were two years ago, and also because this recipe is so good and easy and it makes your house smell great. Note: you can either make this as pumpkin bread or pumpkin muffins, I've done it both ways (and often make a loaf and also some muffins with the same batter). Second note: this makes three loaves, or a whole bunch of muffins (30ish); I frequently use only half the recipe and make a loaf and 6-ish muffins, or just 15 muffins, and it's great either way.
Pumpkin streusel bread (or muffins)
Makes three loaves, or 30 muffins, or any combination of that
Ingredients:
Bread
2 15 ounce cans pumpkin puree
4 eggs
1/2 cup vegetable oil
2/3 cup water
2 cups white sugar
1 cup brown sugar*
3 1/2 cups all purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/4 teaspoon cloves
*I've also done this with 2 cups brown and 1 cup white sugar and liked it that way too, so see what you think.
Streusel:
1 1/3 cup flour
3/4 cup brown sugar
8 tablespoons butter, cut into cubes
For the bread:
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Grease and line your loaf pans or put paper liners in your muffin tins. In a large bowl, mix together the pumpkin, eggs, oil, water, and sugars. In another bowl, mix together the flour, baking soda, salt, and spices. Stir the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients until *just* combined.
For the streusel:
In a small bowl, mix together the flour and the brown sugar, then mix in the butter with your fingers until everything is crumbly and it holds together.
Divide the batter amongst your loaf pans or muffin tins, and bang the pans or tins quickly on the counter to settle the batter. Sprinkle the streusel over the loaves or muffins until they're about covered. Bake for 45-50 minutes for loaves, and 24-28 minutes for muffins.
Enjoy!
Finally, huge thanks to everyone who came out to any of my events last month -- it was truly a joy getting to meet so many of you, and some of our conversations are ones that I'll never forget. The travel got exhausting sometimes, but meeting so many readers made it all more than worth it and meant so so much to me. Thank you all!
Have a great weekend, everyone!
Jasmine
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