Thank goodness Halloween is just days away. It might cheer us up from all the dire economic news. I walked into a grocery store last week just to wander the aisles while my teenage daughter was shopping next door for a Halloween costume. I was overcome by the pleasant sights – big piles of pumpkins and apples, cinnamon wafting through the air from the bakery, gallons of apple cider in the cooler. For 10 minutes I felt as if I had been transported out of my real world and to the mountains of New England. Food – the sight, smell, and taste of it – has a way of comforting you. It might be the vision of fresh apples or the smell of your mother’s apple pie or the taste of a pie, cake, or muffin you only savor once a year.

We tend to bake with pumpkin just in the fall, and mostly around Halloween. I will roast wedges of small fresh pumpkins, drizzling them with olive oil and sprinkling with garlic slices before baking. With any leftovers, I’ll make pumpkin soup, pureeing the cooked pumpkin, stirring it into sautéed onions, adding chicken stock, then a splash of cream at the end. We stock up on canned pumpkin, too, because it’s tough to find in the stores after Christmas. Then I bake pumpkin muffins. All these thoughts danced through my head as I walked through that store. My daughter found her costume, I was refreshed and renewed, we turned the radio to music, not news, and smiled on the drive home. Here is a simple five-ingredient muffin recipe to bake with your family this weekend.

Pumpkin Muffins with Chocolate Chips recipe from