I love cooking and I love writing about food. Most of all, I love food writing for newspapers, because my readers e-mail me information about ingredients and recipes and tell me they like me (yes, there are Sally Field moments). Recently I got in touch with two farmers, the owners of 18th Century Purity Farm in Plainfield and Moosup and Scotts’ Family Farm in Essex. They both said they grow the Lodi apples I wanted, but its season is early short, and the apples were gone by mid-September. I put both of the farms on my calendar for the week after Labor Day, 2019.

Also that week, my editor Lee Howard said a reader was looking for a recipe for chocolate chip pumpkin bread. I played with a recipe. The recipe called for two nine-inch pans but, even at 1 hour, it was gushy in the middle. The next day I made it again and put the batter in three-loaf pans. Perfection. And delicious. And dairy-free.

Chocolate Chip Pumpkin Bread

Adapted from Food Network Kitchen

3 cups sugar

1 cup vegetable oil

4 eggs, lightly beaten

16 ounces canned pureed pumpkin (not the pumpkin pie filling)

3 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

2 teaspoons salt

2 teaspoons baking soda

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon nutmeg

1 teaspoon allspice

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon ground cloves

2/3 cup water

2 cups chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Butter and flour three 9-inch loaf pans; I use Pam with flour, the blue can. Stir in the sugar and oil. Stir in the eggs and pumpkin. In a separate bowl, whisk the flour, salt, baking soda, baking powder, nutmeg, allspice, cinnamon and cloves. Blend the dry ingredients and the water into wet mixture. Fold in the chocolate chips. Divide the batter into the loaf pans. Bake until cake tester comes out clean, about 1 hour. Let stand 10 minutes. Remove from the pans and cool.

Lee White can be reached at leeawhite@aol.com.